Avoiding Stupid Deaths in the 41st Millennium
by erttheking
Summary: A guardsman writes about his experiences in the grimdark future of the 41st Millennium and how stupidity still plagues mankind, usually resulting in death.
1. Chapter 1

You've probably heard the various ways that you're going to die a horrible and vicious death from veteran guardsmen. How an Ork will gun you down, a cultist will do unspeakable things to your skull, a Necron will rip you apart atom by atom, a Carnifex will swallow you whole, the Eldar will fry you with their oh so superior minds, and the Dark Eldar will do whatever depraved things they can think of to you, etc etc etc. Sadly these are all true. However, the one thing people never seem to talk about in basic is all the STUPID ways you can die. Things that officers never expect their soldiers to do, and their soldiers turn out to be a huge disappointment. I have served since I could hold a rifle in the Imperial Guard, have been to planets all throughout the Imperium, and seen some Emperor-forsaken idiots who died painfully stupid deaths. I write this list in the hopes that a few less Guardsmen will die idiotic deaths this year. My hopes are not high.

Grenades are for killing, not juggling: This sounds like something obvious but I swear to the Emperor every planet has at least one frakhead who thinks that he can stare death in the face and laugh. Death proceeds to laugh all the way to the Eye of Terror, dragging one idiot soul with him. Usually alcohol is involved. Just to make things worse, sometimes the people who die from this aren't the jugglers getting a taste of divine retribution. It reminds me of the one time a drunken Catachan tried to do it with a MELTA CHARGE! Long story short, I was on the opposite side of the mess hall, and I still spent half an hour crawling around on the ground trying to find out where the other half of my nose went.

2\. Do not overload your lasgun. You've probably heard stories about how guardsmen have overloaded their power cells and turned their lasguns into makeshift grenades. While I have seen this work firsthand, I have also seen it gone horribly wrong firsthand. The thing is, there's a reason we don't use makeshift grenades if we can help it. Regular grenades have a set time before going off, which is drilled into our heads during basic training. Lasguns are not designed to overload, and the time it takes for them to do so and explode could be anywhere from twenty seconds to one. Look, if you've got your backs against the wall and have nothing to lose, fair enough, but don't use it just to show off. If you don't get killed, you're gonna have to explain to an irate requisitions officer why you keep losing lasguns, and eventually you're gonna be fighting cultists with a stick.

3\. An officer's pipe is not meant for target practice, especially if he's still smoking it: Yeah, this actually happened. Needless to say shooting an officer's pipe constitutes as shooting at an officer, which counts as treason which is punishable by death. The officer in question had a really dark sense of humor though, so he made the guardsman in question smoke his pipe while he shot him through the pipe. Pretty messed up. Though it was kinda funny.

4\. Do not use Ork guns: Assuming you can pick up the thing (In which case I'm never arm wrestling you, because I could only hold up one of those things for five minutes tops. Long story, I had a bet.) don't actually take it along into combat. Really this should be common sense as Ork weapons aren't very well known for accuracy, but somehow when Humans use them they actually get worse. They jam, they misfire, and that's when they don't just fall apart in your hand. Not to mention it makes you a more appealing target because you have a "propa orky gun ta steel".

5\. Do not go to any base with anything even slightly related to Slaanesh: Look, I know servants of Slaanesh can be attractive (Sometimes) but even the most suicidal guardsmen knows better than to screw one. Less people know better than to snog or grope them, because that's all they need to get under your skin. If you count that one time, literally. What can I say, they're into weird stuff. Then again if you're stupid enough to actually WANT to be with one, you're probably ideal cultist material anyway, so nothing lost.

6\. Do not try to outsmart the Chaos gods: I don't care how smart you think you are, you will always get fucked by them in the end, literally if Slaanesh is involved. Any deal you try and strike with them will end up with you being trapped in a loophole, usually directly damaging the thing you were trying to protect. So no, you are not smart enough, stop being so narcissistic. The Traitor Primarchs thought that they were smart, look how well that turned out.

7\. The Tau are not your friends: This one I kinda understand. The Imperium can be a really though place to live in, I'm not gonna lie. And compared to every other race out there who wants to kill us on sight (or in some cases worse) I can see how they would be a fresh breath of air. Problem is that if you join the Tau empire you're gonna get your dick cut off or ovulary ripped out and be used as cannon fodder in a much smaller army with less people. Also all their talks about greater goods and their mech suits haven't done that much to stop that Tyranid hive fleet that's heading in their direction. So yeah, while the Tau have some potential as allies to the Imperium, joining up with them is pretty much hanging a dinner bell around your neck.

8\. Never tell a Kroot "Bite me": Kroots are pretty much jackasses through and through, something they seem to take pride in. Their entire sense of humor revolves around making people around them feeling as uncomfortable as possible, and there's that thing where they eat what they kill. So if you say "bite me" in the rare circumstance that you would find yourself working alongside a Kroot mercenary, he's gonna be a smart ass and be literal about it. And those beaks come down hard.

9\. Rebelling against the Imperium does not work. Ever: Ok look. Nine Space Marine Legions with trillions of supporters once rebelled against the Imperium, and they lost. You'd think after that people would realize that a fight against the Imperium isn't something you're gonna win, but for some reason people keep trying to rebel. Look, no one ever said living in the Imperium was a cake walk, but what exactly do you think rebelling with accomplish? At most, you can get a system independent from the Imperium. Good luck holding your own when you can't call on the Imperial Fleet to fight off the latest cosmic horror the galaxy throws at us. And that's if you actually win, and don't get killed by, say, a bolt round to the face from a Comissar, a bolt round to the face from an Astartes, a bolt round to the face from your superior officer, and if by some miracle you win, dying a slow and painful death from the virus bombs the Inquisition would drop on you. And Outreach used to actually be a nice place to live.

10\. Eldar are not your fuck buddies: Let's get something out of the way. The Eldar are the most insufferably arrogant people in the galaxy. And I've talked to Ultramarines that actually believed that spiritual liege garbage. As hot as Eldar women are, they're only one step above trying to sleep with cultists. I know a lot of people are talking about that LIIVI guy and how he got to bone a Faraseer, but let's be frank. That was a one in a trillion thing. Met a guy who said he got to screw an Eldar and surprise surprise, she put a bomb in him while he was sleeping. At least it beeped loudly so I got to run and scream "I told you so". This goes double for the Dark Eldar. At least with the Eldar you have a one in a trillion chance of ending up like LIIVI. You don't even have that with the Dark Eldar.

11\. Don't make fun of the Imperial Fists' name: They will actually do it. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. DON'T DO IT!

12\. Never talk about things that never happened around the Dark Angels: The Dark Angels are the most loyal Space Marine Chapter that ever existed, so they're well within their right to torture you to death if you ask them about things that clearly never happened…just roll with it.

13\. Don't go drinking with Space Wolves: This one won't necessarily kill you, but there's always that chance. They always bring the home-brewed stuff, and I actually got sent on a rescue mission to find a platoon that had gotten drunk and somehow gotten up into the mountains. They were all buck ass naked when we found them, and I'm still not sure how some of them managed to get their bodies the way that they were. Space Wolves brew strong stuff.

14\. Don't Steal a Comissar's Hat While he's Sleeping: Knew a bit of a joker once. Wore the hat all around camp, imitating the Comissar as he went. Everyone had a laugh. Sadly it turns out Comissars are pretty light sleepers. Not sure how he thought this was going to end, but I imagine being forced to charge an Ork horde wearing nothing but the hat wasn't on the list. I swear, high ranking officials in the Imperium all go to an ironic death seminar.

15\. Don't be a smart ass around an Orgyn. Orgyn are tough as hell shock troopers that will always cover your back with piss and vinegar, always right to fight for the Emperor. But bless them, they're kind of on the slow side and have troubles with metaphors. They're kind of like the Kroot, except more innocently clueless. Like this one time a guardsman from some mining colony in the middle of nowhere told an Orgyn "Shoot me now.". Full ripper gun clip, we had to clean the lady up with a bucket and a mop. Then again she was pretty cruel to just about everyone and I don't think the Orgyn liked her very much. I mean he insists he didn't hate her, but he DID get a medal for it that he seemed pretty proud of.…I think I may want to go back and double check what happened there with a friend or two.

16\. Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed's abilities are not as good as everyone says: Ok look. The good Lord is stationed on what is arguably the most dangerous front in the entire galaxy. He has stood up to the frakking Black Crusades and walked away from them alive. He is without a doubt a tactical genius and the Imperium would be lesser without him. But for the Emperor's sake, he can't hide tank behind a lamppost, he can't hide a platoon in Abaddon's bathroom, and he can't hide a Titan in a frakking bolted shell! What does this have to do with staying alive you might ask? Because maybe a certain author is tired of hearing about it and a certain author might edit the copy of his book for someone who comments about Creed's nonexistent god powers again. An edit that says that the truth of the Emperor's wishes are in a Grox's mouth.

17\. Do not screw around with Necrons; Necrons have got to be one of the most infuriating enemy to fight in the 41st millennium, as their technology stops just short of being able to warp reality on a whim. I fought a long hard campaign once, got skimmed by a gauss flyer, and that's why my foot is metal now. Eventually, we thought we had taken an armory back from the Necrons, had taken an entire squad firing non-stop just to bring one of them down. One of my squad mates was pretty angry at all the friends he had lost that day and he decide to piss on it. Thing is, Necrons have a self-repair protocol and…well…he survived at least. Bet he wishes he hadn't though. I mean I was being carried by our heavy weapons specialist, clutching my stump of a foot, and she said I looked pretty by comparison.

18\. Never accept anything food locals that you didn't see them prepare: Here's the thing about the Imperium, we're spread out over two million planets and some of those planets have been inhabited for 25,000 years. When a population lives on a planet that long, the countless generations tend to make them immune to little quirks that kill the rest of us. A saw a guardsman get a meat pie from a cook on some death world in the middle of nowhere, take one bite and died on the spot. It would've been tragic if she hadn't hunted an animal that the locals called the VENOMOUS DEATH KILLER six hours ago for that very same cook.

19\. Don't screw around with stray bolter shells: I get that the average citizen of the Imperium will never see a Space Marine, even at a distance, and that even fewer will see the weapons they use up close, but if you find a bolt round lying on the ground after a battle, don't assume that it's empty and for the love of the Emperor, don't whack it with a hammer. I swear, not a single person felt sorry for her, and I don't blame them.

20: Tech Priests are just as bad as the Ecclesiarchy: When people talk about religious fanaticals taking worship of the Emperor way too far and killing people over stupid reasons, they tend to point to the cone hats. While this is true, people tend to forget that the Tech Cult is still a religious organization that worships the Emperor, just in a different way. You not showing proper respect to their various bits of shiny metal tends to not sit will with them. I figured that out the hard way and I swear my eyes will never stop twitching.

That's all for now, maybe I'll write another chapter, probably won't though. Really if you need anymore advice after that, nothing I can do to help you.

Author's Note: Just a short little something I scribbled up in my free time. Thought it would be amusing to share.


	2. Chapter 2

21\. Take precautions when playing Gretchen ball: For those of you who don't know, Gretchen ball is becoming very popular in some regiments that are on the front lines with Orks. Capture a few Gretchen and use them as a kickball. Pretty fun game really. But you have GOT to take proper safety precautions and de-fang and claw the Gretchen. Because if every time I have to write on a form "Killed in single combat by a Gretchen outside of combat zone" I die a little inside.

22\. There are no such things as Squats: They never existed. (Roll with it)

23\. Do not mishandle plasma weapons: Plasma weapons are some of the best weapons we can get our hands on, but they must be handled with care. Contrary to popular belief, they rarely explode, only really doing so if they're damaged or if you keep firing them after they've already overheated. Though I'm hesitant to tell that to people because the second they hear that they run off and start blasting away without restraint. If they had stayed and listened for five more seconds, they would've learned that the exhaust from a plasma weapon venting heat can still melt your face off. I mean, she could have at least waited until she got her stupid ass killed so I could've gotten in another "I told you so."

24: Space Marine bolters are beyond your ability: See, people assume Space Marine bolters are the same bolters that the Imperial Guard sometimes uses. This couldn't be further from the truth, we get a rather stripped down version with a smaller caliber. Space Marines, being Space Marines, get a more powerful variant because they can handle it. I know this because one guy took a belter off of a dead Space Marine (And to any potential Inquisitors reading this, I had nothing to do with it) and took aim at some Orks in the distance. He had his nose right on the sights and…Emperor's Bowels, it took be a solid hour to get it out.

25: Do not copy the Death Korps of Krieg: See, unlike most people, I know for a fact that the Korps are trying to get themselves killed, and ironically they tend to die in less stupid ways than most of the people on this list. Still, they're pretty suicidal, they're the only regiment I ever saw attack a trench line with a bayonet charge. Credit where credit is due, they were batshit insane enough to actually make it work. Though it turns out my entire squad joined the charge without permission because they were so impressed by the bravery of the Korps. When I found the bodies I wanted to scream "They were TRYING to kill themselves, what's your excuse!?"

26: Tyranids cannot be domesticated: Yes, someone tried it. It ended about as well as you would think. You'd think that no one would be stupid enough to try it, considering that even the Inquisition has a hard time capturing Genestealers, but you always get that one dense person. Oh, why yes Corporal, you DID introduce me to Henry the Gaunt. What's that? He just ripped your throat out? Well, color me very UNSURPRISED! On a side note, if it isn't poisonous, Tyranid meat isn't that bad if you burn it to a crisp…what? We were low on food.

27\. Never try to use Necron tech: Look, I get it. Necron tech created some of the most stupidly powerful weapons in existence. I want in on that too. But trying to use it never freaking works. And if you try it, your brains will be on the ceiling, your large intestine all over the floor, and your gallbladder will be stuck in my good eye.

28: Rogue Traders are not dashing rogues: Ok that's not 100% true Rogue Traders are people just like the rest of us. Some of them ARE dashing rogues. But with the galaxy the way it is now, they're pricks like the majority of humanity. So while there's always a chance that while joining the crew of one results in you going on a voyage of adventure and romance, it's ten times more likely that you'll end up as an indentured servant giving the Trader 10 kisses on the ass each day because "Oh, you should've read the contract! I don't care if the ink was invisible or you signed it with a gun to your head!" Where does the death come in? Uh…let's say Rogue Traders can get impulsive when it comes to making long dangerous journeys and….rations run low.

29\. Space Hulks are Suicide Missions: People. Space Marine TERMINATORS go in there and don't come out. There are Genestealers, Orks, Chaos and who knows what else in there! I don't care how much ancient and valuable technology there is in there, all the riches in the world aren't worth shit if you're dead! And even then, if you're stupid enough to go in and drag me along, at least plan a little bit! I swear this is true, stupid friend of mine convinced(Read: blackmailed) me into going along with him. He got into the first room and then died in two seconds because the room was flooded with radiation and he had no protective gear.

30\. The Warp is DANGEROUS!: Yes people really are this clueless. You think you wouldn't have to tell someone to not stick their head out of a snip during Warp travel, but Private Dumbass wanted to impress his girlfriend and I had to spend ten minutes bashing in the face of whatever the hell he became with the butt of my rifle. Not gonna lie, might have gotten a little carried away there, I think he might have actually died in the first minute. Hey, most of these experiences are first hand, I needed to vent.

31\. Eating Kroot is ill-advised: We all like a bit of karmic justice. Out thinking the Eldar? Out gunning the Orks? These are situations that we live for. That being said, getting revenge on the Kroot who ate your buddy by eating him kinda backfires. Kroot absorb the DNA of every thing they eat, and they eat a lot of poisonous animals. Your vicious plans of revenge don't really go that well when you end up choking to death on your own vomit.

32\. Don't arm wrestle with Catachans: Not only are these people built like they fap for a living (I'm not sure that metaphor works for the women but SHUT IT) but they can pretty much turn the bones in your hand to powder. And if they somehow lose they tend to be piss poor sports and try and stab you. And that my children is why I only have one eye…Poor sport bitch.

33\. Don't be reckless with overcharged lasguns: Once most Guardsmen learn lasguns can be safely overcharged to get more stopping power, they want to do it all the time. NO! That pisses through ammo like you wouldn't believe, at best you can get twenty shots off before you run out, and you'd be surprised how fast you can fire twenty shots in a battle. So when the woman next to me has an enraged cultist foaming at the mouth charging at her with an axe, she essentially could only point her gun at him and go "Pew pew pew". And let me tell you, that cultist had one hell of a swinging arm. Think I still have the axe.

34\. No sex if a Nurgle cultist is in the same star system: For the most part this is unnecessary because one good look at a Nurgle cultist will probably turn you off sex for at least a good decade (Oh Emperor's Ballsack I didn't know a person could have boils there) but the thing is, Nurgle is a morbidly obese pedophile who loves to give everyone the clap (What the hell did you think all that talk of "Papa Nurgle" was about?) and he's brewed up a few hundred million variants of it. You'd think an airborne disease that lies dormant in the carrier for a year and then gets sexual transmitted is an absurd concept. Well I have a friend who had to cut his dick off to avoid being killed by one. We had to burn the thing in a fire sustained by sacred parchment with prayers written in every corner. And even then I still think we should've thrown a reliquary of a saint in there.

35: Never try to comprehend the plans of a Tzeench cultist. If Nurgle is a morbidly obese pedophile then Tzeench is a twat with insecurity issues the size of the Eye of Terror, because he always comes off like he has something to prove. As a result, his cultists make stupidly complex plans involving four betrayals, five inheritance schemes and seven acts of arson just to work in a place that has a nice view. Trying to figure out how the Hell their plans work will actually result in your brain ending up outside your skull (Don't ask. Someone tried to figure it out, same thing happened to him). And you kinda need that thing.

36: Know your limits: Look. Humanity kind of got the short end of the stick. Our technology isn't what it used to be, the Imperium is run by incompetent old men, and everything out their either has better technology, better biology, or both. Just know when to drop it, say "Fuck you General" and bolt. Contrary to popular belief, a Comissar is much easier to overwhelm than a whole Ork army. Thousands of idiots were going to die one a pointless suicide charge against Orks if one soldier didn't snap and stab the commissar to death with her bayonet. They all stared at her slack jawed going "Oh right, we out number his bolt shells 100 to one," while that lady was in the middle of a nervous breakdown and ripping his heart out to make sure he was dead. Anyway, that's how I met my wife.

37: Don't take Dark Eldar drugs: I don't want to go into this. I was young and stupid. People died and I woke up naked in a tree three days later. In the middle of a volcano. To this day I don't know what the hell happened. Not even once kids. Just smoke Lho-sticks. Oh the moral isn't to not do drugs, the moral is to not use XENO drugs. Because Dark Eldar drugs are made for insane fetishists that need to prove how sexually active they are. That and, you know, trigger happy Comissars exist.

38: Space Wolves Wolves are not big friendly doggies: I have only seen these things twice and they are VICIOUS KILLERS! They will rip your limbs off and chew your bones down to the marrow! So don't try and give them a great big chew toy, they've already decided that you will do. Every time someone tries it! And the Space Wolves just see it as them not having to feed their pets for a day, so don't look to them for help.

39: Frak the The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer: Really, just frak everything about that Emperor forsaken book. The second your commander isn't looking, burn your copy. I know what you're thinking. Isn't the Primer a galactic joke? Doesn't every guardsman worth their salt know how crap it is? Well hundreds of men and women new to the guard die each year following it's stupid advice. And even the more experienced soldiers sometimes die following the advice that SEEMS more reasonable. Like stabbing Orks multiple times in the throat to make sure that they're dead. Not a bad idea in concept, except melee range with an Ork is a place you want to avoid at all cost. And they don't mention what to do if the Ork tries to bury his axe in your bowels when you're on thrust #3.

40: Do not attempt to make an Eldar Farseer your sex slave: I just…why do I have to say this? Isn't it obvious? Doesn't it go against every rational instinct in the human body? Ok, first of all, you try to make anything your sex slave, you deal with me. I don't care how Grimdark this world we live in is, we are not the frakking Dark Eldar. We have STANDARDS! Second of all, a Farseer? Are you insane!? Those things shred veteran Space Marines to pieces, what makes you think you have a chance at surviving half a second? Third, no one would allow it, and anyone in charge of a captive Farseer wouldn't let anyone eager for a screw near it.

But this is irrelevant because WHY WOULD WE HAVE A FARSEER!? They are too dangerous to keep contained and even if we did find a way to flash-fuse three Blanks to her so that she doesn't murder an entire planet, you can bet your ass her entire craft world is going to show up to try and save her. And me fighting an entire army so you can get a fuck toy? Not happening, even if I wasn't disgusted by the concept. Let me know if it was worth getting the Avatar of Khaine set on you.

Author's Note: For those of you wondering what the hell I'm on about with the last one, check out EclipsePheniox's newest story, trapped. And have a pillow on standby so you can scream into it in frustration.

Well, once again I haven't updated in awhile. I hope that this is something to tide my readers over while I work on my other two stories.


	3. Chapter 3

41: Learn the differences between the Eldar: Eldar are complete and utter stuck up pricks…the Craftworld Eldar that is. The independent Corsairs are…well they're pricks too and the Dark Eldar…well they're also pricks-ok the end point is you can actually trust the Harlequins. These xenos dedicate their entire life to destroying Chaos, none of this "divert a WAAAAGH! into Human territory to save twelve Eldar" bullshit, so you can usually rely on them to keep their world if it'll result in dead cultists. So hey, fun times all around. We want dead cultists, they want dead cultists, good times. The thing is, a lot of people are (justifiably) paranoid about the Eldar in general and a few guardsmen who were with me tried to shoot at our temporary ally who wasn't going to betray us (For once). Let's just say he did some psyker crap so their shots kept missing him before he gutted them all on the spot. Then he said something about rising action. These guys will work with us but dear Emperor they're PRETENTIOUS!

42: Do not attempt to seduce an Ork. NO! JUST NO! Honestly, everything else I mentioned on this list involved sex takes second priority to an Ork (Minus the bit with the sex slave). Have you ever seen an Ork try to fist someone? I HAVE! HE USED A FRAKING POWER KLAW! AND THAT WAS JUST FOREPLAY!

43: Do not Underestimate minor Xenos: The big xenos power players in the Milky Way are Orks, Eldar of all kinds, Necrons, Tau and Tyranids. Despite this, there are easily thousands of smaller races throughout the galaxy, and when you're not fighting the usual suspects, you'll probably be sent off to exterminate one. And when its species is put at risk, the natives will fight tooth nail and tentacle to survive. So it doesn't matter if it's cute and adorable and fits in the palm of your hand, there's a good chance it'll try and rip your face off. Usually with their teeth. And it is not a pretty sight. So just kill it before the Tau can annex it.

44: Don't play "Hold er steady": Hold er steady is a new drinking game that involves people downing a beer, putting the bottle on their head and having a friend shoot it off with a stubber and then switching. Yes, this is a disaster waiting to happen. Thankfully the guardsman in this particular incident only lost a bit of his frontal lobe (I think) before I put a stop to it. Sure now he makes Ogyrn look like arechotech experts now, but it could've been a hell of a lot worse. The Administratum could give him a bionic replacement, but they said it wasn't worth the resources. I honestly found it hard to argue with them.

45: Avoid Love Triangles: I'd tell people to avoid this anyway, if only because love triangles are simply insufferable, but they can get people killed. There's always the members of the triangle trying to murder each other, but on the other hand there are lovesick idiots just have to drag others down with them. Like that time in the trenches where two guys and a girl were going at it while I was five feet away from them. I had a giant barbed spike sticking out of me and I was desperately trying to remember if the small and large intestines were named for length or diameter while they were bitching about whose dicks had been where.

46: Stop saying Feth: Feth is a spirit unique to Tanith. You know, planet fraked up by Chaos #9315? The survivors from that planet are few and far, so don't pretend you know what Feth means. And they are damn sensitive about their planet being destroyed and they WILL challenge you to a knife fight to the death if you don't pay it the respect it deserves. And I will do nothing when they slip around you and open your throat.

47: Beware Valhallan showers: I thought it was agreed that hypothermia was bad for you. Well, the Valhallans didn't get the memo. Astropath probably bollocked it up. Most people will run screaming from these showers because they feel like you just took a dip in arctic water. But some numb nuts will try and prove how tough they are by trying to stay underneath longer. I learned two things that day. Valhallan showers are co-ed, and that these showers can actually kill you. Somehow it doesn't kill the Valhallans, but those nuts actually find it pleasant.

48: Be careful when laying with fellow guardsmen: Look, I'm married. I understand the urge to seek comfort in the arms of another. But here's the thing. Commissars…REALLY don't like playing babysitter. They don't want anyone in the regiment unless they can hold a rifle and we haven't quite figured out how to weaponize babies in a way that wouldn't turn us into the Orks. Commissars already have too much stuff to stamp out, don't have them cracking down on sex too. Because they do it with those Emperor forsaken bolt pistols of theirs. The moral is, do it in the ass.

49: Autoguns were replaced by lasguns for a reason: I know there are still plenty solid projectile weapons circulating through the Imperium, especially on poorer planets, but we replace them with the trusty lasgun when we can for a reason. Twice as much ammo capacity, easier to maintain, power packs can be recharged at any Chimera and even on a fire (Highly dangerous though, last resort only) and they can be overcharged in a pinch. So while you should most certainly use an autogun if there aren't any lasguns in the area and you desperately need a weapon, we've been trained in the use of lasguns and most of us don't know how to use and maintain them properly. This is what caused my jaw to drop when one dumbass from another platoon got a stovepipe jam, one of the most basic jams to clear, and he honestly thought the gun was broken and started using it as a club. It says a lot when the Ork that killed him managed to figure out how to clear it in only half a minute.

50: Do not drive vehicles unless you are trained: Tech Priests weird me out (And I'm hardly alone on this) but there's no getting around the fact that they know their crap when it comes to designing vehicles and discovering failings. Despite this, a team of three was utterly flabbergasted when an idiot took a Leman Russ for a joy ride on a dare. He was inside, so I don't know how many times the thing had to flip in order to get him out and stuck in the treads long enough to grind him to a paste like that, and neither did the tech priests.

51: Don't drink on the job: I know alcohol is good for making you forget how much life sucks, and in the trenches that's where you need it the most, but the next think you know your foot is in my lap and you can't quite remember how it got there. And let me tell you, this one happens a lot! There was an arm, and eye, a foot, a body part that caused my wife to make an extremely dark joke, and even a spine. Hell, a few more times and I can assemble an entire human body from the parts I've gotten.

52: Always be alert if the planet you're on contains an enemy force: You know the old phrase "Out of sight, out of mind?" I wonder how many lives that mentality has claimed, because it sure as hell isn't a low number. I learned first hand that if an enemy army is still on a planet, you don't spend your time there partying, no mater how far away you are from the front, because we live in an era were advances can be very fast and very brutal. As my current base filled with partying soldiers found out in a horrific and brutal way. I don't know what was more traumatizing. Hiding at the bottom of a pile of corpses, clutching my wife's hand and hoping we would both get out of this alive, or watching Orks try to figure out the inner workings of a toga party.

53: Don't be too proud to accept help from the Ultramarines: I know. I KNOW! They're utterly infuriating stuck up pricks. Is is bullshit that they're responsible for the most damage done to two of the three hive fleets, that they have the most successor chapters, and that their Chapter Master killed a fragment of a god with his bare hands? Yes it is, it's the most infuriating band of twats I've ever heard of, but we should still use this to our advantage. In a galaxy where everything wants to fuck us, sometimes literally, we need every asset we can get. So I want Marneus Calgar at my side. I'm still going to talk shit about him the second he's out of earshot, but I'm smart enough to know I'm more likely to survive hiding behind him when a Daemon is trying to eat me.

54: Disregard 53 if the Ultramarine in question is Cato Sicarius: Forget everything I said if Cato Sicarius is involved. You think the standard Ultramarine has an ego the size of a small moon? Well they do, but Cato Sicarius has an even bigger one, and it tends to manifests in ways that are a lot more destructive (Not to him, but to the poor sons of bitches around him. Namely us). I was on the other end the system where this happened, but when we were clearing out a Chaos infestation, Sicarius got hundreds of thousands of men killed. The Ultramarine 2nd company was supposed to secure the flank of the main army, but he led them running off to go fight some warlord. Because he insulted his honor or something (Probably just insulted that stupid ass thing he calls a helmet) and so he had to go prove his worth while the plebeians all died. So yeah. If he's around, don't count on him for help.

55: Don't pick a fight with the Administranum. You will lose: The Administranum is like a train wreck that just keeps going, everyone knows this. We've all been waiting to get a delivery of munitions and food and get something we didn't need/want. The weirdest thing I ever got was a bag of used diapers, my wife a couple of Tau bladders and some kid who transferred into our unit actually got delivered the preserved corpse of a saint. Wonder how many people got fired (Out of an airlock) for that one. Despite this, fighting with them to get what you want is an exercise in futility. People have actually died from starvation and thirst in the waiting line to make an appointment, it's so long and they're so incompetent it takes forever for them to process someone. Still, it wasn't all bad. I got to go next after that.

56: Try to not antagonize the other people in your unit: We're kinda tiny and scrawny compared to everything else out there, that's why there are trillions of us fighting the good fight all over the Imperium, to even things out with raw numbers. The problem is that this advantage doesn't really work if you burn bridges and alienate the people you're supposed to rely on. For example, if you lose a game of poker, don't throw a tantrum and pull a gun on her, she might snap your wrist. And when you have a broken hand and you're end out to fight anyway, the husband of the woman you threatened might not feel like helping you and might instead just use the time to write his book while a Hormagaunt turns you into its new chew toy. Thanks for the entry by the way. Fucker.

57: Store your weapon properly: Keeping number 52 in mind, I appreciate that some people want to keep their weapons close by in case of an enemy attack, but there's smart ways to do it. Don't just put them somewhere where they can go off and kill you. The old under the pillow thing is great way to accident;y set it off. Let me tell you, years before I was married, a good looking corporal coaxed me into her bed. She was buck naked, was looking down at where I was laying leapt onto the bed…and set off the laspistol under her pillow, blowing her brains out. I was sexually withdrawn for YEARS after that!

58: Remember where you buried the mines: Ok seriously people? This is extremely basic. Mine go boom. Boom hurt. We not want hurt. Therefore, we no step on mine. Bad people go boom. Not us. So when someone puts the sign about the minefield up and it's FACING THE WRONG WAY people tend to get a little confused about where Steve went and why it suddenly started raining blood and bits of organ and the shavings created by my teeth grinding together.

59: Practice trigger discipline: You know those trigger things we have on our guns? We pull them when we're pointing them at people we don't like and that's all. Our fingers stay away from those triggers unless we're doing that or are about to do that. It's annoying enough when people can't just keep their fingers where they belong and blow a couple of holes in the roof, but when I'm just trying to eat, I'd prefer if I didn't have to deal with the guy next to me leaning over to the side and smashing into my plate because it turns out he has a hole in his head.

60: Don't get caught with this book: This is a recent affair, but with the Imperium's zero tolerance policy against common sense, people who possess this book are ordered to be executed. Don't worry, there's an easy way around it. Before you burn your copy of the primer uplifter, take the cover out and put it on this book. In fact there's a fun game you can play with this. Give this book like this to an officer who's an ass hat before shouting "Heretic!" and running away. Karma coming full circle.


	4. Chapter 4

61: The Servitors are not playthings! I have enjoyed plenty of evenings off watch seeing Enginseers use load-lifters see how many gretchin they can punt in a minute, or watching 'sharpshooting' with gun-servitors, but when one breaks or gets misprogrammed...we didn't find all the pieces. Of either.

62: Don't take the Tactica Imperium to heart: The Tactica Imperium, contrary to popular belief, is not a single book but rather millions upon millions of tomes all dedicated to the same topic and it'd take the better part of your life to get through it, if you even last that long. Still, compilation editions of one form or another are commonly issued to officers and unlike the the Uplifting Primer they're good for something other than wiping your ass (And frankly wiping your ass with the Uplifting Primer is an insult to your ass). The problem is that there have been hundreds of thousands if not millions of authors involved in the Tactica Imperium so it can very easily end up contradicting itself. Take it figuratively and use it for inspiration, otherwise we'll just end up constantly charging at and retreating from a fortified Chaos cult that is getting increasingly confused but is still picking us off with long range weaponry. Because the officer in charge couldn't figure out that you can't combine Creed's supreme tactical flanking and ambushes with that asshole Kubrik Chenkov's suicidal charges.

63: Do not use the hoverpallets for your stupid frakking...whatever! You have a 10,000 year old tech-pattern using minerals mined from the heart of a star or something, and you are pissing off it while going up and down cliffs. It's going to eventually smack your face into the edge of the cliff and I can tell you right now that it's got enough force to take your head clean off!

64: Respect the Elysian drop troops: The drop troops get a lot of flak from the rest of the guard AND the navy for not being real guardsmen and infringing on their territory respectively. These people are both stupid. I mean seriously people, we're ok with the Chem Dogs but we just can't stand drop troops? Ugh. I was part of a unit that was pinned down by heavy rebel fire and the commander of a unit that was stuck with us refused to call down the Elysians because they "weren't real guardsmen." Fifteen seconds later, he was on the ground picking up his missing teeth, I was cleaning the stock of my gun and the Elysians were raining death on the rebels. This idiot with, missing half of his teeth, still tried to talk shit to the Elysian commander that saved our asses, even though the guy was way more polite than honestly he had to be. Anyway, that's how he lost the rest of his teeth. To me. Emperor's balls, I'm turning into an Ork.

65: The Sisters of Battle aren't interested: To all the men (And women) out there who have fantasies about screwing Sisters of Battle…forget it. They took an oath of celibacy and they take it VERY seriously. Granted I think I might have seen one fapping to an image of the Emperor once (I wasn't where I was supposed to be, don't ask) but I only got a glimpse. Anyway back on topic, there were a couple of guys and gals who got drunk and started hitting on this one Sorita. Half an hour latter there was blood everywhere, all but one of them were dead (And the one survivor's arm turned up on the other side of the city), and I have never seen a copy of the Lectitio Divinitatus be used in that manner. So yeah, that was my reunion with my sister. For the record the one guy who survived tragically died when I was bringing him to camp to get medical attention. He accidentally fell on my knife multiple times.

66: The Sisters of Battle are not to be underestimated: Look I have no idea if this bullshit about Sisters being killed for blood by some undocumented Space Marine chapter are true (I asked my sis and she refuses to give me a straight answer, but she starts swearing under her breath and grinding her teeth whenever I do, so I'm a little worried) but they're still heads and shoulders above the rest of the guard. They have bolters when we all have our lasguns (Well YOU have lasguns, I have a hellgun) so maybe don't alienate the ladies with the big guns. Because I'm just going to point and laugh when you're pinging away at a Chaos Space Marine all by yourself. I've done it before and I'll do it again.

67: Ditch any scavenged Tau weapons before you get back to camp: Look I know, this one is really painful to do. I'm not a big fan of the Tau, but they make damn fine weapons. Back in my first enlisted year, when I was still wet between the years, we were fighting the Tau and captured an armory. We helped ourselves to the weapons and dug in. I can't remember the last time I had so much fun, those weapons were accurate, powerful and above all satisfying. We racked up one hell of a kill count were still riding the high all the way back to camp. Then everyone in my squad was executed for using heretical alien tech. They only didn't do me because I actually lost my pulse rifle on the way back. Yeah. That was a fun first mission.

68: Force feeding a Carnifex soldiers is an ineffective way of killing it. Yes. This happened. I imagine the guy who tried it was a fan of Kubrik Chenkov. Sadly the Carnifex had been killed by more conventional and rational means by the time we got our hands on him, so the obvious route of giving him an ironic death was out of the question. So we got uncreative and just clubbed him to death. Starting from the bottom and working our way up.

69: Don't pick on Psykers: This just doesn't end well for anyone. These guys have Daemons constantly yapping at their heels, which I imagine would put even the most calm and level headed person on a state of constant edge. I think Astropaths have it better but even then they still have to be careful. Because if you push these guys too far, they're going to snap and they'll get the last laugh when the ceiling becomes a floor and the floor grows a dick. With spikes on the top. And let me tell you, when you see three guardsmen who have been impaled on a giant Daemon dick's head spikes, you're at the very least going to spend a month trying to destroy the memory (Unsuccessfully) with alcohol.

70: Cut the PDFs some slack: No seriously, lay off. You know how bad we have it? At the very least we have reliable equipment, experienced and almost always take part in combined arms tactics with other regiments. PDFs have none of that. They have their own wit and whatever weapons the bumblefuck nobles on that planet gave to them. Which is the bare minimal for the Imperial Guard, if they're lucky. So when Tyranids invade theyhave to single handily fight them off with their crap equipment until the Guard gets there, which might take awhile because the Administratum forgot where the planet was (AGAIN!). As such, when we finally push them back and are making patrols with the shell shocked survivors who turned the thousand yard stare into a thousand light year stare, the last thing they want to hear is a smart ass saying that this was just the barely surviving fraction of a splinter feet that had been destroyed a few months ago and that they should try being in a REAL fight. I never saw the woman who said that again but I can guess what happened to her. Most of my theories involve sharp objects, the PDF on that planet had a thing for swords.

71: Make sure there's air on the other side before you open the air-lock: I would honestly be surprised if anyone reading this is shocked by this at this point, but just in case someone is trying to hold onto their sanity, yes this happened. It was especially dumb because everyone else was wearing void suits and he was the one that pushed the button. At the very least I can now confirm the explosive decompression is a thing. First hand experience there.

72: Don't even bother picking fights "Champion" warriors. I'm not talking about Chaos Champions here, I'm just using a generic term here. You now how it works, you've got the rank and file canon fodder, the guys worth a bit more, the elite troopers that can put up a fight but still go down, and the people whose names you actually learn. These guys are scarily competent and you should only bother if you're aiming at them with an anti-tank las-canon. I don't feel sorry for the lady who thought she could take on,Archionan the cracker of worlds and the fucker of skulls, but she tried and predictable results followed. I didn't really see how it happened, I was getting the hell out of there so I wouldn't get to see how literal the name was.

73: The battlefield is not a frakking fashion show: Enough with the fancy dresses, the puffy tunics, the feathered jock straps and anything that puts appearance over practicality should be tossed on the fire. That stuff gets in the way, it tends to be flammable, and Emperor's sake it looks tacky. I still haven't forgotten the time this one regiment of blue-bloods all had these long and stupid looking stuffed up collars that gave them serious tunnel vision. It was so bad that they actually got flanked by Orks. ORKS! When you get flanked by an Ork that isn't a Kommando, you have to do some serious soul searching.

74: Remember that we're somehow still in M41: This is something that has been such a mindfuck that it's best just to not question. It's M41. Not M42. Even though the 13th Black Crusade happened a decade or two ago and that happened in 999.M41, it's still M41. I have no idea why or how this is a thing. All I know is that people have honestly been threatened with summary execution for claiming that it's M42. So just don't bring it up. No real reason to anyway. It's not like M40 and M39 were that different from M41 in how soul crushingly brutal and hopeless they were, why would M42 be any different? (Granted this only makes people insisting that we haven't moved to the new Millennium even more confusing)

75: The Marines Malevolent are essentially the spawn Nurgle's bloated ballsack: Marines Malevolent. Malevolent. MA-LEV-O-LENT! When you get a name like that you're pretty much doomed to be a douche guzzler the size of a small star, and for the love of Sanguinius' magnificent long flowing bright golden hair, they live up to that name with pleasure. I honestly think at one point they actually made their mission harder for themselves by placing themselves in a heavier fire zone, because otherwise they would be expected to save people's lives. If they show up in the same system as you, consider desertion. You're more likely to survive that way.

76: The Lamenters are essentially the lost children of Sanguinus, so respect them: Emperor…the Lamenters. Easily the most tragic Space Marine chapter in existence. Their words are "For those we cherish we die in glory," and sadly they've been doing quite a bit of it. They've been shunned by the Imperium for the most trivial of things, the Ultrapricks hate them because they didn't get down on their needs to suckle their taint, most people distrust them for being part of the Cursed Founding, and blah blah blah. They never, EVER, stop fighting to protect the people of the Imperium, no matter how much of their own blood is shed. Millions of people owe them their lives. You have a problem with the Lamenters? You answer to us.

77: Artillery is to be manned by trained personnel only: You know how hard it can be to reliably shoot a target at a hundred meters? Imagine shooting a target at ten kilometers. Except you don't have a direct line of sight, you have to shoot up into the air and calculate the trajectory so that your shot hits the target on the fall down, and it's an explosive shell so you have to make sure you don't blow up friendlies. This takes a great deal of training to do with accuracy. So please, no trying to be heroes and blast a Vampire Raider out of the air. And if you do it anyway, don't shoot directly up! When the shell comes down we don't lose a valuable artillery piece in addition to your stupid asses.

78: Better equipment does nothing if in the hands of people who can't use it: Ok, this one isn't from me but from my better half. She was from a planet under heavy influence from the Iron Hands. They were getting annoyed by us dying all the time so they had an idea. Augment several million soldiers to make them better fighting machines. And they did not half ass this. Cybernetic limbs, eyes, several organs and mental enhancers were all standard issue, and this stuff was top notch. Just one little problem. They gave all of this to fresh recruits. Who had never seen a fire fight before. Hundreds of thousands of them all died on their first mission and plenty more on the ones after that. My wife is one of the few who actually lived long enough to use the implants properly. HOW!? How do you frak up that badly!? If we had millions of Veteran Sergeants with stuff like that (I am one so I'm a little biased) we could've done some serious damage! But nooooo, the Iron Hands were more concerned about how "the flesh is weak" and not "These people don't know what the FUCK they're doing."

79: The mounts of the Death Riders are not cute horseies: Do you know the first thing about the Death Korps? I mean it's in their frakking name. They're from a radioactive hellhole and I think they like it that way. Their horses reflect it, because someone as batshit as a Kriegsman wouldn't be happy if the thing they were riding into battle wasn't as fucked in the head as they were. Simply put, if you try and pet one of them, expect to lose your hand. And wrist. And the rest of your arm. And then your head. Those things have big appetites.

80: When you execute everyone in a squad except one, expect the survivor to murder you: I don't know what he was expecting. I remembered his face, his name his unit. Everything. I bided my time, waited years. I pulled enough strings to get sent to the same planet where it all happened, where he was stationed. I blew his brains out all over the illegal graves I had made for them. And thanks to all the evidence I planted in his room, he's now remembered as a traitor and a heretic. He's dead, his reputation is gone, and in his last moments he was begging for his life. If anyone ever tells you revenge is hollow, I say, only if you're stupid. If you're smart, revenge is the best feeling in the world.

XXXXX

Author's Note: My dear friend Pentralion wrote 61 and 63, although I did add to 63. If you've got any ideas for an entry on the next chapter, feel free to PM me. (PM please, don't leave it in a review. Let's make it a surprise, it's more fun that way)

And I'm still working on the next From the Ashes chapter, it's just that this chapter was almost done anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

81: Do not over rely on the Adeptus Arbites during a true battle: Many a trooper has thought "Hey, the Adeptus Arbites are equipped like a small army, surely they can help us when the planet is being invaded." Well it depends. Planets closer to active war zones usually have Arbites that balance law enforcement with planetary defense (And as it turns out, on max settings power mauls are very good at snapping spines and smashing skulls.) On planets that are more peaceful though, the Arbites seem to be more interested in beating up poor people for breaking up nonsensical laws (Apparently being destitute is illegal on more than a few planets and punishable by a fine) and/or shaking them down for tax money for a new law they totally didn't just make up. As such, when a Chaos cult is rioting in the streets (Who turned to Khorne out of desperation because the Arbites kept being asshats) you can't trust them to hold formation. Twelve men who were counting on them for supporting fire died, but on the plus side all of the Arbites died too and I now have their outfits for emergency situations.

82: Be careful on where you store the ammunition: This is like 57 except there's another layer to it. A lasgun can be left in a mud puddle overnight and it'll be ok so long as you have five minutes to clean it, but ammunition can be a bit more finicky. This goes double for bolter ammunition as those things are explosive shells that contain more explosives and we want all of that to not go off until it's in an Ork's face. So when I'm woken up by a loud explosion and I remember that someone left a box of bolter shells by the base's main reactor, I know I'm going to get pulled for corpse disposal duty. Again…also always fast for a day after something like that happens. Trust me on this one.

83: Simply burning heretical texts might be a bad idea: Now this is very much an exception to the norm. Most Chaos writings, altars, fetishes (Not that kind of fetish, shut up) can all safely have a flamer taken to it. And should. No, what I'm talking about is a Chaos text where the very ink used to write the words has power, something only done by extremely powerful sorcerers. These texts need to be shot into the sun of the local system to be disposed of. Because trying to burn it in a normal fire will incur the wrath of the demons whose blood was mixed into the ink (Of course…). I'm not even sure why that missionary was against the idea, surely the blazing heat of a star is a bigger middle finger than a simple fire. But no, and the last time I saw him a Lord of Change had inverted his body. Oh speaking of which.

84: If you ever see a Lord of Change run as fast as you can in the other direction and call down an orbital strike: This applies to all Greater Daemons really, but Lords of Change are the only ones I have any experience with. A dedicated kill-team of Space Marines going up against one, and ONLY one still has a 50% chance of not walking away from it. So unless we've got a perfectly positioned tank platoon ready to shred it to pieces, drop what you're doing, haul ass, and tell the navy to blow the frak out of that warpspawn. The missionary I mentioned earlier didn't seem to appreciate this. Yeah, your flamer is really going to hurt him buddy.

85: Don't bother trying to brutalize Slaanesh cultists. We sometimes lose ourselves in the heat of the moment and we want to cause as much pain and suffering to the people we're fighting (Emperor this one time I woke up in the back ally of a Hive, covered in blood that wasn't my own and I couldn't remember last night at all) but with Slannesh cultists it's an exercise in futility. The Inquisition has discovered (Though a LOT of experimentation I would imagine) that the only way you can really cause them suffering is through total sensory deprivation. Tearing their stomach open and ripping their guts out just makes them jizz their pants. What's more, they're not overwhelmed by the pain and can still kill you. I personally witnessed a couple of cultists kill a friend, both of them with rock hard dicks and nipples at the time, even though their organs were flapping out of their chests. Though for the record it's ok to brutalize their corpses after they're dead. I was feeling a little vindictive that day and I did things to their bodies that I honestly feel ashamed about and that I'm taking to my grave.

86: Only ingest anything Ork related as a last resort. And I don't just mean the things they make, Ork meat is the most rancid thing you'll ever taste. I tried to keep it down and failed. Considering how batshit the Orks are we really shouldn't be surprised that they drink fuel, put gunpowder in their cigars and let their meet "ripen" for a few days. Only eat or drink anything from them if death is the only alternative. And for Emperor's sake, don't chug Ork grog just to show how tough you are, that stuff shreds your insides. LITERALLY! THERE'S GROUND UP GLASS IN IT!

87: Death worlds are called that for a reason: Did you know that Catachan doesn't have a standing defensive army? That's because it doesn't need one. The wildlife on that planet is so vicious it honestly repels planetary invasion. It's an extreme example but death worlds are named that for a bleedingly obvious reason. On half of them it's considered a great achievement to make it to adulthood, and even people who have lived on said planets their entire life are just one slip away from dying. Anyone who goes skinny dipping in a lake that turns out to have a giant man eating serpent in it, I will gladly help the natives erect your half digested skeleton in their display for "Stupid people who couldn't read the sign." For the record, the woman I helped put back together was #999. If she had been #1000 I would've gotten a free bottle of highly expensive whisky…thanks for nothing.

88: Don't look the other way when your squamates are doing something heretical: I don't mean the "Is not paying respect by not reciting the 6532nd hymn properly" or something, I'm talking about serious Chaos worship crap. See as much as we hate Comissars, they exist for a reason. To put bolt shells in the heads of people who think praying to Slannesh is a reasonable response to not getting laid. Hey asshole, I don't care how much you like the guy, he's praying to a being that was born from the dying souls of trillions if not quintillions of Eldar so he can stick his dick in something. Luckily you didn't get killed from his Chaos related bullshit. The Commissar just executed the both of you when he found out.

89: Never accuse a Warboss of having no balls:…I was young. Very young. He kicked me…one of them popped. I was one of the lucky ones too.

90: Don't play Vostroyan roulette with any gun, ever: You are presumably not suicidal. Ergo, playing a game which could explicitly kill you is a bad idea. That's basic common sense, right? I frakking wish. A few people in one of my old squads tried it out with, I shit you not, A MALFUNCTIONING PLASMA PISTOL. Mind you, they weren't entirely dense: they'd overloaded it and aimed away from themselves with the idea that it'd explode on a random trigger pull, then failed to account for the splash radius of superheated plasma. How many of them survived that? A surprisingly high number, at least for a few days, with their skin melted into their clothes and their flesh turning to goo from absurd amounts of radiation poisoning. Remember why we don't turn guns into makeshift grenades?

91: Remember that Orks reproduce via spores: A bad thing about Orks is that they come back to life unless you burn everything in a ten mile radius of anywhere they've been to ashes. It's not the worst thing about them, that'd be either their homicidal rampages across star systems or their lack of grammar skills, but it's bad enough that you'll want to keep your flamer on you at all times. My company forgot theirs one time, and were for some reason surprised when the Orks they'd killed ten years ago ended up overrunning the planet they'd been fighting on, losing that system a critical Agri-World's worth of resources. A lot of people were executed for that monumental frakup, several of them by me personally, and the reason I got to live is because I joined literally a week after that particular battle. Thank the Emperor.

92: Segways are not proper military vehicles: I am seriously having a hard time figuring out if this is real, but I've seen too much evidence to the contrary to pass it up. So apparently Imperial Guardsmen sometimes make massive charges with segways. I just…why? I can walk faster than half of those things, they take up both of your arms so you can't do that shooting thing you want to do when charging, and you just look like an asshole! Maybe the plan is that the enemy will laugh themselves to death. Maybe. From the records that I've seen that's a little overly optimistic. And my overly optimistic I mean if you think that'll work I think you've recently been skull fucked by a Keeper of Secrets.

93: Don't interfere with a Imperial assassin's work: One official from the Adeptus Administrium tried to prevent an attempt on a traitorous planetary governor by sending mercenaries to kill the operative in order to buy the subject some time to flee. It was somewhat successful... Until the operative snuck on the governor's ship, and used his gun to blow the frakking jackass's head off. It turned out that after the Vindicare had interrogated this particular Administrium official, he left the bastard to die in the most painful way by slathering the arsehole with honey and milk and hanging him from a high perch. The intent was to have stray animals slowly bite off chunks of his flesh, and this is a fate I wouldn't wish upon anyone.

94: Removing a bullet on a battlefield doesn't help anyone: Too many kids in the Guard nowadays act on crappy propaganda movies, where they need a dramatic scene so they have a surgeon rip a solid projectile that was stuck in some 15 year old blue blood who couldn't act but wanted to be famous. I mean brave soldier. The thing is, a bullet or other projectile that has come to a full stop has already done all of its damage, and digging it out is just going to make the poor bastard on the table lose more blood. Even if its poisoned, odds are its already made his way into the bloodstream, as that's a Dark Eldar thing and their poisons work FAST! So your attempts at heroics are probably going to kill the guy faster because your serrated combat knife tearing his chest apart isn't good for him. Who would've thought? (Minor exception, you DO need to get the bullet out if it's an explosive round that hasn't gone off)

95: Maintain any cybernetics that you have: This goes double if they're second hand (Anyone who makes a joke about that gets my boot up their ass). The Imperium has incredibly advanced medical technology, but you have to be important enough for them to bother using it on you. After decades and decades of service and fighting in dozens of war, I qualified for implants that weren't used by someone else before. They were low budget, but I was the first one to wear them. And you've got to maintain all of them, or they will crap out on you at the wrong moment. So no, your leg leaking grey fluid isn't something that will just go away, and you have no one but yourself to blame when it gives out on you lady. I told you to maintain that thing but you just said, "I'll do it later." You are so fucking lucky that Dark Eldar accidentally shot you in the head…

96: Blue-Bloods couldn't be more stuck up if they tried: Dear Emperor, NOBLES! Proof that Tzeench exists and is laughing at our misery. Think about it, how else could something so stupid exist unless that tentacle monster stopped hunting for teenage schoolgirls (Probably pissed he didn't get to Fulgrim first) and blew his load all over the Imperium? They seem determined to fuck over the Imperium. If they're not blowing Thrones (That seems to be the currency of the Imperium? No one can really make up their mind if it is or not.) on their diamond encrusted toilet seats or gold plated jock straps (yes REALLY) they're doing much dumber things. Like the time they had their servants carry them to the battlefield in suspended chairs. And then the rebels shelled them. Predictable results were predictable. And the inconsiderate pricks had all of their weapons studded with jewels. Do they have any idea how hard it is to pull that crap off of a power sword so people won't know it was looted?

97: Purple does NOT equal stealth: It's a semi-well known fact that Orks can slightly bend reality if they collectively believe something, like red ones go faster. (My sister actually sabotaged an Ork vehicle by dumping pink paint on it. That was a freaking funny day.) That being said, it ONLY works for Orks. So trying to play against their weaknesses by putting on a purple body suit is not going to get you through their camp for recon. Well we did learn one thing. Apparently the Orks did copy one thing from human culture that we didn't know about. Wishbone pulling.

98: Remember that we need to eat: I've lost track of the number of times we've run low on rations because its more satisfying to pack guns than it is food. More than once I've had to eat (IE, force down and try hard to not vomit up) Emperor's Mercy Bars and at one point I gave up and just ate a rat. More protein there. The important thing to remember is that soldiers need food just as much as they need ammo, at least with food we won't die FOR the Eldar. It must have been odd for them. To see hundreds of thousands of soldiers starving and forced to retreat, eating those who had already died. I wonder if they were disappointed they didn't get to use their elaborately complicated plan.

99: Dark Eldar are not fucking kinky: What is wrong with people? I'm not going to judge you for your kinks, we all have a few, but the Dark Eldar are not people who engage in naughty fun times. They put you through the most unbearable torture possible so that they can fend for Slannesh from gobbling up their souls for a few more miserable years. So don't flirt with them and for Emperor's sake don't let them near your food! I've risked my life to mercy kill someone who was being carried off by Dark Eldar, and I'm not doing it again.

100: Be wary of angry loved ones: There was a brave young woman. Well if she had been living on a peaceful planet she would've been young, on the battlefield she was older. There was another young lady who made her heart flutter. This second woman was wounded and under fire from when one of our lines were overrun by a Chaos invasion, one that the Eldar caused via manipulation. The first woman had a fire in her eyes I had never seen before. She abandoned her position and flitted between enemy lines. I got distracted by a sniper trying to take my head off, but when I had put a burn hole in her throat, twelve cultists were dead, and the woman was running back towards me. Her sweetheart in her arms.

The commander was furious. Not because she had thrown his plans into jeopardy, but because he was one of those pricks who didn't like his soldiers eating without his say so. He stood there, screaming at her, lasers and darker projectiles still flying. She stood her ground, glaring at him, her sweetheart whimpering in her arms. Then he pulled a pistol.

I doubt he was expecting the heavy weapons expert to kick him in the kneecap so hard that it shattered. I doubt he was expecting the sister of battle to sear his trigger hand into a blackened shell. And I doubt he expected the sergeant to use a stolen Eldar pistol that had a few shots left in it to reduce his corpse to a red mist and, making it look like the Eldar did it. Anyway, the moral?

Don't. Threaten. My. Daughter.

XXXXX

I'd like to thank BCTheEntity for 90 and 91 and Marcellasnow231 for 93. Kitkatinahat gave me inspiration for 97

Also…I suppose I might make this announcement early. I'm putting together a . Nothing too solid right now, just ideas, and I won't put it up until I update From the Ashes again, but I do plan on starting a . If you have any thoughts, ideas or criticisms related to that, please share them. I'm just announcing it now, I'm still working it out. More details will be revealed in a couple of weeks, but for now rest assured that I'm not putting anything behind a pay wall. The only thing unique to donators will be early access to chapters that I'm working on, and probably being able to submit ideas for a once a month one shot series I'm planning on starting. We'll see how it goes.

EDIT: I edited 89 to make 100 plausible.


	6. Chapter 6

101: Getting rare and valuable guns isn't worth it: Plasma guns and other rare and valuable weapons are for the rich and the elite. Sometimes you get lucky and one falls in your lap (I finally got all the rubies off that power sword) but otherwise you're just not going to get one. A ripper pistol is a good example, a solid projectile weapon with so much poison it can bring down an Ork. If you want to get one and you're not a Rogue Trader or an Inquisitior, you're going to have to storm a pirate base for directions to a hidden cache guarded by local warlords for a key to an underground vault taken over by Tau sympathizers where the fucking thing is. But I had to go through it because my daughter wanted to give it to her sweetheart as a birthday present and I wasn't letting her go alone, and I'm so stupid I kinda think it was all worth it, so I'm not taking my own advice! I'm going soft in my old age. (She's damn good with that pistol though)

102: Used customized ammo only if you know what you're doing: Dum-dum rounds, inferno shells, manstopper bullets, bleeder rounds, amputator rounds and the absolutely vicious organ grinder rounds. These are all unique types of ammo that can be used with solid projectile weapons. My daughter in law is a gunslinger from Gunmetal City and she's got a collection of all of them. Half of them are incredibly situational, and can save your life if used right and get you killed if you use them wrong. Bleeder rounds are amazing against cultists, but against Necrons they're worthless. Because Necrons don't fucking bleed. Yeah, when I met my daughter in law for the first time, she learned that some members of her gang weren't as good with their weapons as she was.

103: Don't get cute with fire: Oh my sister goes off on a rant every time something like this happens. Yeah, you might feel like a badass when you douse someone you hate with flammable liquid, leave a trail with it and ignite the trail. Sure you could've just blasted him with a flamer, but what could go wrong? Oh right, a SLIGHT BREEZE could break the trail and he could escape and stab you with that shiv he was hiding. Or both. Oops.

104: Don't mess with Leviathan command centers: Look, with the galaxy the way it is, we need as many big guns as we can get. A Leviathan isn't exactly a Titan, but it's still got a big damn cannon and I'd like to see it firing at the enemy as much as possible. As such, dicking around with its internal mechanics because of a bet isn't recommended. I'll be standing by and taking pictures when the general catches you. Last time this happened he ordered the two who did it strapped to one of the shells. Damn did they get some mileage.

105: Don't mess with Titans: Basically everything that I said above along with how viciously protective the Tech Priests are of their toys. Seriously, do you have any idea how hard it is to make Titans nowadays? They do, and they're very protective of the ones that they have. So you try and put random shit in the gears and I won't be surprised when they kick you off over the edge. Had a fun time with my sister then, because that Titan was in the middle of climbing a mountain. We learned how far you need to fall to hit terminal velocity.

106: Don't underestimate the Exodite Eldar: Now I know what you're thinking. Eldar who have forsaken technology and live away from the Craftworlds? Oh man, the is the perfect chance for payback! This is what one woman I was stuck with on a scouting mission kept saying. I kept trying to point out that they weren't stupid and still used military technology, but she didn't want to hear it, she just wanted to kill some primitive xeno scum. Yeah, five seconds later she was up to her waist in the mouth of a Megadon. Another five seconds she was all over the place. I just kinda gave up and walked off while it was feeding. Maybe the Eldar are onto something about us all being primitive and stupid…well they would be if they weren't as primitive and stupid as the rest of us, just better at hiding it.

107: Non-human mercenaries can rarely be trusted: To be fair, human mercenaries aren't the most trustworthy either, but at least they stab you in the back because someone else offered them a better deal, not because they want your species dead. Kroot, Eldar and even frakking Orks can be hired if you're desperate and far away enough from Imperial territory. Ironically the Orks are the easiest to hire, just give them a load of scrap metal. Not so ironically they have a tendency to kill their employers when they got bored. The Kroot do it when they're hungry and the Eldar do it because they're loyal to their own people above all else. We should follow their example. Then kill them. That's what I did when one of them tried to run be through with his power sword. I tried to tell the Captain it was a bad idea, but he didn't want to hear it. And he was on the receiving end of a shuriken catapult. I didn't know bits of human could get that small.

108: Opt out of a battle if you feel too much pain to properly fight: Ok, my wife can turn off her pain receptors, but she's an exception to the rule. If you're completely overwhelmed by pain, just shut up and keep your head down. Fire your rifle from a prone position if you can, but stay put unless you need to retreat. You won't do anyone any good if you can't walk so much as five feet. So for fuck's sake, don't abandon the trenches try and charge a Mad Dok. When you collapse right in front of him, he'll think that you're offering to let him "Fix ya". Even Orks think Mad Doks are psychos, and that poor bastard figured that out the hard way.

109: Remember that our armor kinda sucks: Seriously. It's good for stopping stubbers, autoguns and lasguns, and not much else. And only humans use those weapons. Carapace armor can block a bit more, but even it can't do much (Speaking from experience here). Avoid getting hit in the first place, hug cover, get out of enemy lines of fire, and be good at parrying and dodging. Don't scream "THE EMPEROR WILL PROTECT ME!" while trying to blast down a row of Orks out in the open with an auto lasgun. You got one and a half before they ripped you apart buddy. I think the Emperor has bigger fish to fry.

110: Never use Chaos weapons: You'd think that I wouldn't have to tell people to stay away from a bolter that has sprouted eyeballs, but then again I'm on number 110 for a reason. So yes, just don't. They've been tainted by the Ruinous Powers and it'll go just as well as it sounds. If it won't corrupt you into being a servant of the Chaos Gods, it'll just grow a tentacle and rip you a new asshole. I'm not being cute, Slannesh will actually give you a new asshole. Along with a bunch of other painful changes I don't want to think about.

111: Eldar weapons are good, but nearly impossible to get fresh ammo for: Remember number 100? Yeah I hung onto that pistol for a bit. It was damn effective, but the only ammo that I had for it was what was in it. I ran out pretty quick. I kept it hidden in my barracks on the off chance I fought Eldar again and got to loot their bodies, but some dip shit stole it and tried to kill a Chaos Space Marine with it. There was an awkward moment before the Marine grabbed his head and crushed his skull with one good squeeze. Oh, remember number 80 and keep it out of sight too. It's possible to pull this off with pistols but not with bigger weapons, the commander started ranting about how heretical it was when he found the body. Or maybe that was about how the Marine was defecating on the corpse. I didn't feel up to asking. Was more wondering if Marines can normally do that or if this was some Slannesh deal. His armor was kind of looked like it was part of his…you know what never mind.

112: Fancy sword moves will get you killed: A sword is not a performer's baton to be spun around and tossed into the air. It's a hunk of metal that should be stabbing the enemy in the chest, face and everywhere else. Do not try to be flashy with long wind ups, flips or spins, just lop the asshole's head off and call it a day. Because he will if you don't. I tried to tell this to some stuck up "sword dancer" git, but he just laughed and said that a plebeian like me would never understand. At the end of the day, an Ork was using his skull as a handle for his gear shift and his sword as a car jack.

113: Nobles, the battlefield isn't court and you're made of flesh and bone just like us: I've had more than a few goes at nobles and I'm going to have a few more. Stuck up prats, most of them anyway. Always think they're better than use because of "superior breeding" which usually means that they look better or inherited money and they kill anyone who disagrees with them. The problem is that they're stuck in their delusional fantasies so much that they honestly buy their bullshit about being superior. So when Lord whatshisface of who cares spots an ordinary Khorne cultist with a pair of axes, he thinks he can take her. The thing is, while just a regular human that cultist had probably seen fifty more battles than him (As fifty is fifty more than zero). Stupid boy thought it would be a duel. She hacked him to pieces, every swing of her arms taking another part of his body off. His dress uniform and asinine looking gold cape weren't so pretty when they were drenched in his own blood while he was screaming for his life.

114: Don't be an ungrateful prick: When someone intervenes and stops a cultist from slaughtering you, almost losing his good eye and getting more than a few broken ribs in the process, say thank you. Don't say, "Don't touch me you filthy commoner," and "I'll have you killed for interfering in my duel," while lying in a pool of your own blood. If you do, I'll just let you lie there and bleed you out. Hey, I know you want me to go get that medical pack over there, but you told me to not touch you. Hands tied. I would've saved him anyway if he had just been a bastard. But then he had to threaten my life. Sorry champ. I've got this thing called life preservation.

115: Paranoia doesn't help: A healthy layer of skepticism might be able to get you from one day to the next, but there's a line between that and paranoia. We had spent six months fighting for control of a Hive city that Chaos had taken over, helping the still local loyalists. One lady was losing her mind from all of the hit and run attacks in the areas that we had managed to take back. Some cultists were hiding among the populace. She spent most of her time raving and ranting until eventually she shot some sixteen year old kid who had been fighting the cultists with his dad's old hunting rifle. Needless to say, the locals didn't take kindly to that, even though the kid lived. They got angry and asked how they knew if she wasn't really a cultist. I think that was the final straw that snapped her fragile mental state. She screamed that her mind would stay pure and blew her own brains out. Did I mention that the cultists were routed and victory was declared the next day?

116: Friendly Fire is a thing: I understand that when the enemy is charging you, you want to get as many shots off as possible before they reach you. That being said, could you please double check to make sure the people you're firing at are actually the enemy!? I have enough stress issues as it is, I don't need a las bolt taking off my helmet and singing my scalp as well! The asshole was smart enough to hide when I turned around, but he wasn't so lucky when he did it the second time. The Commissar had him executed, and for once it was called for. YOU DON'T FUCKING SHOOT AT THE BLOOD ANGELS!

117: You can get killed off duty: Contrary to popular belief, surviving a round with the Necrons does not make you invincible. I get that after you want to brag after you don't get vaporized by them, personally I'd rather just crawl into bed and forget about it. Just remember that you only survived because of tactics and a bit of luck, not because you're the Emperor's chosen. You're still vulnerable to being stabbed in the throat with a broken bottle. So if you're going to pick a fight with a big burly motherfucker after your great victory, try and die silently when I'm sleeping upstairs. My wife and I barely ever get any anyone time, and we just want to silently rest in the same bed.

118: Most technology doesn't age well when left in a cave for 10,000 years: People love to talk about the powers of ancient technology, how it was too great for us to handle, and how we can find wondrous artifacts on the edges of space. Here's the thing. Sometimes they've broken down. Oh sure, sometimes we find an ancient STC that makes the Mechanicus spew oil everywhere but we're just as likely to find something sputtering sparks and Emperor knows what else. So maybe give it a few safety tests before grabbing it. I don't care how vivid your Rogue Trader fantasies are, it won't stop your new plasma pistol from blowing your entire arm off.

119: Don't ever interfere with the Inquistion's work: If I need to go any further on this, then you deserve to experience all Nine Actions first hand. All I know is this. When an Inquisitor asks you for Necron technology, you don't tell her why it's a bad idea. You shut up and give it to her. I don't know if she's still alive, and I don't care. You. Do not. Fuck. With the Inquisition.

120: Don't be an asshole to the nobles that actually pull their weight: Emperor be damned, there's some nobles who actually do something. This one had actually taken my advice, ripping off all of the impractical and gaudy parts of her uniform off. She was the medic for her regiment and was operating on a wounded soldier when I found her, one who was crying for his mother. Poor sap had taken a direct hit from a Dark Eldar weapon, the sick fucks having coated it with a slow acting and painful poison. He just wanted the pain to end. She wasn't letting him go though, and spent hours trying to save his life, juggling him with a few dozen other wounded soldiers.

Funny thing is that she was ignoring the people in her own regiment because their wounds were all superficial (Because the cowards were letting us do all the fighting), she was focusing on the common people. One guy In her unit got pissed that she wasn't treating the mild concussion that he had, and made a move to kill her patient. Next thing I knew, the jackass was dead on the ground, a scalpel having been driven right into his thought. She glared at his corpse and then went right back to work. She stayed with that man all through the night. Somehow, he pulled through. They're married now. I was there. The last time I smiled like that was when my daughter was born.

XXXXX

Author's Note

I just wanted to make an announcement. I've been really nervous about this so…here we go.

As of today, I am starting my own . This is something that I've been thinking about for a long time. My college days are coming to a close, and my job opportunities aren't looking that great. Student loan payments are going to be coming up soon, and any help that I can get will be a huge help with that. I've been writing for half a decade and it feels weird asking for money now, but I trust my fanbase and I've been taking steps to make sure this isn't predatory.

I don't want to cut off any content, so the rewards will be bonuses. One dollar Patrons get their name on my profile and in my stories. Five dollars Patrons get access to a google doc where I will keep my in progress stories. In short, they get to read the stories as they are being written. For the ten dollar Patrons, they will be able to vote for a new series I am going to start working on. Monthly one shots. Ten dollar Patrons will be able to submit ideas for the one shots, all Patrons will be able to vote on those that are accepted, and everyone, non-Patrons included, will be able to read it. I wanted to include a twenty dollar Patron but I couldn't come up with a solid idea. I had the idea of cameos, but there were two problems with that. The first being that if there were two many my stories would be clogged with cameos, and that one cameo isn't a good incentive for a monthly payment.

I've been toying with the idea of goals, but I haven't come up with anything solid. One idea is that I get X number of dollars a month, maybe 300, then I'd commission monthly artwork for my stories. The topic would use the same system as the monthly one shots. Like I said, this is just an idea, and I'm open to the idea of more goals or whether or not you just want no goals.

I have a page under my the same username as here, Erttheking. Everything that I didn't explain here will be explained there. Please, check it out, and donate if you can spare anything. Even one dollar a month will be appreciated. If you can't or don't want to, don't worry. The stories are still going to be flowing. If you have any feedback on what I could be doing to improve this , please let me know. I need your feedback now more than ever. Ideas for if you want goals, or a twenty dollar Patron.

Thank you for sticking with me all this time, and thank you for everything you've done for me. Please, just head on over to and search my name. For some reason you can't see it from google Just take a look at my page, that's all I ask. That failing, check out this link

www com/ user?u= 2591529&amp;ty= h (Sorry. doesn't let me put in links for some reason)

Thank you for sticking with me all this time, and thank you for everything you've done for me.


	7. Chapter 7

121: Do not insult a soldier who is pressing a gun to your face: Hey all budding commanders, here's a pro tip. When you've gotten a soldier mad enough that he's got you at point blank range, a few things. First of all, you're a failure of a commander if you let it get to this stage. Second of all, you do not further antagonize him, you try to get him to stand down. Third of all, you do not say his family will die if he does anything. Because that directly translates out to "Kill me and make sure no one ever finds out." And that's exactly what happened.

122: Do not give a person a position of power just because they're a good lay: There was this one utterly braindead Inquisitor who gave a position of power to her boytoy. She was on thin ice already, there was another Inquisitor shadowing her, waiting for a reason to have her branded a heretic, she kept shooting her bolter when other people were trying to talk, and she kept limiting her troop loads because "I can't go over 2000 points". But her fuck toy, OH MY EMPEROR he was the worst. Tried to sleep with everyone with a XX chromosome, though thankfully none of them were interested. And then he tried to sword fight with an Ultramarine scout. I know right? So yeah, his neck got snapped and his girlfriend got killed after she took a shot at Uriel Ventris and her babysitter lost his temper.

123: Do not threaten a soldier's family: No this isn't a personal one, but with me the point still stands. Stupid pompous blue blood prat says that he want's a soldier's eldest daughter as a servant. And when I say servant, I mean he was licking his lips and leering at a nearby woman when he said servant. I'm not even sure the guy had a daughter, he might've looked mad on principle. The prick seemed to act like everyone else would side with him in his quest to enslave another human being. Surprise surprise, humans aren't monsters and filled him with bayonets. I was pretty sure he was already dead when I got to the head of the throng, but I didn't care. This was a good chance to show my little girl how you make sure the bayonet doesn't get stuck in the ribs.

124: Don't play at being detective if you don't know what you're doing: I got stuck with an idiot trying to investigate the disappearance of a noblewoman. We turned her room upside down and found an Eldar artifact. The dumbass thought it had nothing to do with it because the Eldar weren't around anymore. Hey dip shit, you know who else isn't around anymore? THE WOMAN WE WERE LOOKING FOR! And then he goes and arrests the girl's parents! Why? Because there was a secret passage in the girl's room. I am not making this up. Actually he just said there was, we never actually FOUND them. And they were nobles. So yeah. Death by Iron Maiden for him. I threw him under the Land Raider and I don't regret it

125: Felnids are not cute, cuddly or sexy: 99.99% of the people of the Imperium have never and will never see them, but are convinced that they're sexy cat-girls. You know what they are in reality? Part mountain cat. IE, vicious predators and carnivores. They're kind of aware of how sexualized they are by the Imperium and they've gotten sadistic about it. They love saying, just out of sight, "I could just eat you up," before getting very literal about it. Goodie, they took humor lessons from the Kroot.

126: Know how armor works: I've said it before and I'll say it again, our armor sucks. But it's still ARMOR! You're probably still going to be bleeding after you get shot by an Ork gun, but your flak armor could be the difference between life and death. YOU DO NOT GO ONTO THE BATTLEFIELD WEARING A HOODIE! The braindead moron who did this, and I WISH I could make this up, said that there was Adamantium in the hoodie and that a Tech Priest had put it there. ADAMANTIUM! Because apparently this kid never knew that Adamantium is damn near unbreakable, and we are not getting it in thin layers. Go figure, someone was fucking with him and he ended up being impaled on a Farseer's spear.

127: You being a noble doesn't mean jack if you have no lands or titles: Oh blue bloods, they will never stop being my favorite punching bag. Because they keep doing so much stupid shit. See, there was this guy acting like he was a big deal, even though he had absolutely nothing. He got uplifted for some stupid reason (I think the braindead Inquisitor from 122 had a hand in it) but no one gave him anything to make it worthwhile. Even the other nobles thought he was pathetic. Probably why they didn't help him when he tried to claim his superiority to some Savlar Chem-Dogs and they beat him to death.

128: Sniper rifles are for killing, not showing off: Whatever form they come in, be it an old fashioned solid projectile rifle or a long-las, sniper rifles have an age old philosophy. One shot one kill. Simply put, you should only be pulling the trigger if you intend to end someone's life, or are practicing to end someone's life. But you get the occasional fuckwit who can't just put a hole in someone's head/throat/chest and needs to savor the moment. We had spent the last three days being harassed by an Eldar Ranger, dozens dead. Our sniper finally gets a bead on him. What does she do? Shoots directly in front of the Ranger so he'd look up at her first and see his killer before he died. Except he didn't do the dying part and blew her head off. As it turns out, Eldar Rangers are faster than cock sure dumbasses.

129: You do not need three pistols: Two should be the most you ever need provided you aren't some three armed mutant. I have seen some of those, so they can safely ignore this one. The stupid woman I saw do this was a Catachan, which sounds about right. Even the women on that planet seem to be stuck in a permanent dick measuring contest. But back to pistols. My daughter's sweetheart only carries two, and she's been training to dual wield them since the age of thirteen. A third pistol is just dead weight, and in the hands of stupid people it's downright deadly. You ever watch a woman try to draw a third pistol while still holding the other two? I have. It ends with a misfire to the throat. I wonder if all Catachans misfire like that, it would explain the overcompensation.

130: You cannot disable a Tau stealth suit with a flag: Before we get going on this one, standard banners. An utter waste of men and resources. A person that could be shooting a gun is now waving a flag around. For morale? Yeah that'll help us. When I've got an Ork's axe in my side, a flag with bullet holes and burn marks really keeps me going. Anyway we all know standard bearers are usually the bastard kids of nobleman whatshisface, who want his stupid kids to feel like they're contributing, but the position is known by most to be overblown. But some stupid people think that they're important and have to prove themselves, so this one woman tried to use it to stab a Tau stealth suit. After it had just massacred a squad. Yeah, it bounced off its arm. Then the Tau backhanded her head off. I think he got half a kilometer is terms of distance.

131: Do not use a Space Marine on a stealth mission: Ignore this if the marines in question are Raven Guard. Uh, in case you haven't noticed people, Space Marines are about as twice as big as you and several times as heavy. They attract attention. A sniper will get in position and start taking shots. The Marines will be fine, you won't be.

132: You cannot boss around Space Marines: When you want something from a Space Marine, I don't care who you are, you say please and thank you. Even the damn Inquisition knows better than to step on their toes. No one told this twat though. Thought he could order around, a pair of Ultramarines just because they were scouts. Now I'm not saying they killed him. I'm just saying he threatened to execute them if they told their Captain about the mission he gave them, and he turned up dead the next day when the Marines left. And there were twelve eye witnesses. They just didn't say anything to officials. Guy was an asshat.

133: You cannot use a chainsword without training: Oh dear lord those things are a nightmare to use. I risked execution and looted by power sword just so I could get away from them. First of all, they're multiple times heavier than a normal sword, so fancy flourishes are out of the equation. Second of all, it kicks like hell when it's revving. So you train before you use it in combat, and that way you can avoid slicing your own face off, unlike the wonder brat I got stuck babysitting. Was hard to explain that to his commanding officer.

134: When someone doesn't want to talk about their homeworld, drop it: I "guess" I have a reputation now. They call me "The Veteran of a Hundred Wars", even though I only ever fought in eighty-seven. Ninety-one if you count those ones that never got recorded, either through cover ups or the Administratum forgetting to. Anyway, people want to know where I'm from. Stop. Asking. It's none of your fucking concern. For your own good, just shut up. It's one of the few scenarios where my temper is even worse than my sister's. And she set the last person who asked on fire. Granted we learned after that he had been planning to blackmail her into being his mistress, so he had it coming.

135: Push your kids too far and they'll kill you: This is sadly common. I've seen hundreds upon hundreds of idiot mothers and idiot fathers who fucked and then treated the kid as an afterthought. They did horrid things to the kids that I don't feel comfortable repeating, and the kids always hit back. Finding daddy's gun, poisoning mommy's stew, or just taking out mob loans in their names. Parents think that they're just kids. No one's a kid when they're fighting for their lives. And it turns out even a five year old girl can cook up a molotov cocktail. Isn't that right Dad?

136: Anti-plant grenades are as worthless as they sound, never bring them on a mission: I don't know why these things exist. Grenades designed to kill plants. Granted there's probably a Death World or two out there with killer plants, but for the rest of the galaxy, I'd rather have a frag or a krak grenade. The problem is that idiots can't tell the difference between normal grenades and those ones. Cue the award moment when a guardsman in a nearby unit losses her mind and suicide charges the Tyranid horde. And then successfully assassinates the grass they had been standing on. And a nearby shrub. I guess it was a heretic.

137: Only use weapons that are up to snuff: A mining colony was being overrun by Dark Eldar who we're trying to their usual thing. My unit was the second regiment to arrive on the scene. The first one had been completely wiped out. When we joined up with the local PDF and managed to push them off planet, I thought that it had been another reminder of how overwhelming the enemies we had to face were. Then I learned they had been recruited from a backwater planet and had brought their muskets to fight with, saying they didn't want to use the "Devil's arms" IE lasguns. Well, all three-thousand of them died and only five Dark Eldar were lost in the process. If lasguns are the Devil's arms, I want to see if he's got anything special in the back. The Devil is some big name hive ganger right?

138: Hand flamers are not as good as they sound: So we managed to get a flamethrower in the form of a pistol, sounds like a dream come true right? One problem. You can only shoot them twice. I'm serious, it's only one step above the muskets and the dueling pistols I mentioned before. And these things have a range of ten meters. So it's got a pathetic range and only two shots, so except as a desperate lass resort, it's good for nothing. In a nice change of pace, it was a Khorne cultist who got himself killed. Fired twice, (Killed his own people) and then kept trying to burn my face off, clicking away at an empty gun. Even when I had my sword in his gut. After that he banged it on a nearby barricade and kept trying to shoot me. I think this is why Khorne cultists mainly use melee weapons.

139: Servo-Skulls are not for riding: Ok, you do know that those things are damn fragile and only have enough thrust to lift up 5kg of weight? So you can't hang onto them and go flying with them. I tried to tell this woman that on top of a mountain fortress that we had just taken. It might've had been the alcohol in her system, but I only gave her one shot. I drank three that hour and I wasn't the one who had my face ripped open on a cliff before tumbling down the rest of the way.

140: When your host has invited someone into their household, they're probably family friends, so show some respect: I actually kept in contact with that noblewoman in 120. She and her hubby are working their way up to their eighth year of marriage and she invited my family and I to a party at her mansion. First time I had ever been to a Garden World, and I have to say, I was reluctant to leave.

It was fairly pleasant for the most part, as she isn't too friendly with many other blue bloods, so I didn't have to deal with too many pricks. Plenty of food and wine (Overdid it with the drinking, had to force myself to throw up in the bathroom) actually ran into a couple of old friends, and Zamora (Shit, I forgot to say, that's her name. No I'm not giving anyone else's name out, she was the only one ok with it) is the life of the freaking party.

The problem is that she had to invite a few twats out of obligation. Either that or they crashed the party. I forget, she mentioned why they were there when I was halfway through my fifth glass. Oh, they had such massive sticks up their asses, it was hilarious. They tolerated my sister (barely) because she was a Sororita, but the rest of us got nothing but glares. They finally lost it when Zamora gave the spotlight to my daughter so that she could propose to her sweetheart. It was honestly pretty magical. That gunslinger rarely lets anything pass that stoic expression of hers, but when my daughter pulled out that ring, there were tears in her eyes.

They, like me, had had too much to drink. Unlike me, they hadn't removed the alcohol from their system to avoid making asses out of themselves. Combined that with them being ass hates and the fact that there were strains between them and Zamora's family over them trying to take a moon they own. Despite that things still worked out all right. Only two of Zamora's family guard died, I learned my wife only needs two fingers to break a human spine, and I got to keep the booze they had brought over. There was one thing my daughter was a little bummed out about though. She had wanted to let her fiancé know a secret she had had while proposing. Not when sending a concentrated blast of warp energy into the face of a drunk nobleman.

Oh yeah, my daughter is a psyker. Zamora managed to pull some strings to get her sanctioned without going on the Black Ships and had a retainer teaching her.

XXXXX

Author's Note: I have to thank EclipsePheniox here. His demented little story Trapped and his unintentional monster of a "hero" have given me so much material to work with. A character who enslaves the children of soldiers who disobey him, threatens to rape POWs, arrests people with little evidence and forcibly takes over their military forces was just a freaking gold mine for my story. I swear 121-132, Are all heavily inspired by his work. I wish I could make stuff like what he does up, it'd make writing this list so much easier.

Also, just a reminder, I've set up a page with bonuses for Patrons. Nothing major will be behind a paywall. Every single dollar with help. Fans waiting for the next chapter of Crossed Blades, it will be ready in a few days.

Special thanks to my current Patron: SuperFeatherYoshi.


	8. Chapter 8

141: Pride is worthless: You're proud of yourself? Good for you. Like having a third nipple, it's pretty pointless. Unlike a third nipple, it can lead to death. Look, if you think proving something to someone is worth throwing your life away, then fine, fine by me. Just don't drag anyone else down with you. There was this cult leader, damn expert with a sword, and he insulted the sword kills of some local champion. Said champion had his guard charge the guy to prove a point. Turns out the cult leader didn't even want to fight him, he had planted landmines in front of his position. By the end of the day he was doing heretical but slightly funny puppet shows with what was left of the guy and his men.

142: Don't be stupid about revenge: I'm not going to tell you that revenge is bad. A good look at 80 will tell you why, but be SMART about it. If I had a Throne (I think that's the currency of the Imperium but no one can seem to make up their mind about it) for every half assed revenge scheme I've seen, I'd be a minor noble by now. I'll keep it short and just leave the three worst examples. Shooting a noble in his quarters and then writing a suicide note. In Low Gothic. With several spelling mistakes. Snapping an ex-lover's neck and then pushing them off a cliff to make it look like the fall did it. When the cliff is only five feet high. And worst of all, assassination via grot. I don't want to talk about that one.

143: Knives don't work if they can't reach the organs: If you're facing a cultist, feel free to stab them in the gut to your heart's content. Most other things however? Either go straight for the throat or don't bother. If you can't reach the throat, don't bother. Things out there like Orks aren't seriously wounded by knives. At best, you hurt them. Sometimes not even that. One Ork asked if a guardsman was trying to tickle him when she stabbed him. He wasn't being sarcastic, he actually thought she was trying to tickle him. So he took her knife and "tickled" her back. In the lungs, the kidneys, the stomach and the face.

144: Do not steal Ork vehicles: Assuming you can figure out how they're supposed to work, and assuming that you don't have to fill up the gas tank via a straw, and assuming that you can figure out that that human femur was the key, Ork vehicles just aren't' reliable. Mainly because they're designed for creatures much bigger and stronger than us. In addition to being designed by dipshits who are so stupid the laws of reality sag under the weight. After our raid I told everyone to get back in the Chimera, but some wet behind the ears rich boy had his servants help him steal an Ork buggy, and as it turns out he couldn't reach the brakes. And even if he could, he didn't have a boulder to press it down. And that was a freaking tall cliff.

145: Do not try and make the Tyranids fight Orks: I'm seriously toeing the line here so I need to be vague. Let's just say that a certain ex-Inquisitor had the Tyranids and the Orks fight one time, and it did not work. It did not fraking work, it could not have backfired any harder if they had tried. Orks from all over kept jumping on the bandwagon, and the Tyranids were at an all you can eat buffet where the food ran towards their mouths. So whichever army eventually wins is going to be ten times stronger when they come out. Because apparently when dealing with a race that constantly consumes organic matter to refresh its ranks, this idiot forgot that the Necrons exist! They aren't organic! The Tyranids would come out of fighting them either dead or with wasted resources! No wonder the Inquisition kicked him out! Ugh. Anyway, the moral is keep Tyranids away from Orks, lead them to Necrons. Not the Eye of Terror though, the idea of Tyranids adapting to Chaos makes me shudder.

146: Learn what momentum is: See, when something gains movement, it keeps moving until something else stops it. Whether it be gravity or a solid object. Some people can't seem to wrap their brains around this concept. So when you're trying to do wheelies in a Leman Russ tank and you go down a pretty big hill, you're going to go faster and faster. And someone else can clean the bone fragments out of the treads next time!

147: Pride REALLY IS worthless: Ok, get this through your thick skulls people. Your pride isn't worth a damn thing. It doesn't carry out the Emperor's will, it doesn't secure planets, and it doesn't kill the nightmare incarnate monsters out there. If you let your pride rule you, you end up like Cato Sicuntius getting other people killed just so that you can feel like you have a big dick and/or cilt. Not everyone wants to engage the Eldar Warp Spiders in melee just because they said your corset looks tacky. We only came out on top because we outnumbered them twenty to one, and even then we lost half our unit. Oh, and onto the next one.

148: Do not engage Eldar in a field they specialize in: There's an old saying. Six Space Marines and six Eldar fight. The Space Marines kill five Eldar and then the last Eldar kills the Space Marines. The idea behind it is that they were fighting in a field that only one of the Eldar was trained in, and said Eldar was able to take on six Space Marines while the others were out of their depth. If Space Marines can't do it, you can't. Don't try to counter snipe a Ranger, don't' try to burn a Fire Dragon, and don't try to overpower a Farseer's mind. Just. Freaking. Don't.

149: Learn what logistics are. This is for all the commanders out there. Armies need food, water, weapons, armor, munitions, support vehicles, resupply lines, oh you should know this. So when a few million soldiers get dropped off with the clothes on their back and nothing else, they're not going to last very long. That was the RELIEF FORCE! At least the prick who did it died with them. Shame it wasn't Kubrik Chenkov.

150: Don't rely on cover too much: Once upon a happier time, you'd at the very least be safer if you were behind a stone while during a fire fight. That's before every asshole in the galaxy opened wide and shat out the crap we have to deal with on a daily basis. Needless to say, cover doesn't work that well anymore. Half of the things we fight like melee range anyway, so it's kind of pointless. Nice lady, if a bit air headed, thought her sandbags would keep her safe. Maybe they would've if it wasn't a World Eater with a chain axe trying to kill her. Minus the trying part.

151: Remember that Plague Marines are walking disease dispensers: I only ever went up against one Plague Marine, and it made its way into the top ten worst days of my life. The thing tore its way through an entire platoon and then hit mine. I lost three quarters of my men before we could finally bring it down. I learned a lot of important lessons about Plague Marines that day. First of all, burn the corpse, there is no such thing as a fire that's too hot for one. Second of all, one on one combat will end with it impaling your spine with its warhammer. Thirdly, taking its skull as a trophy will give you around a hundred known diseases and a couple of unknown ones that Nurgle probably spurted out of his chode early that day. And you'll finish off the rest of the platoon, minus their leader who had received med-evac because all of his cybernetics had shorted out. Cunt.

152: Noise Marine weapons are not stereos: I don't know how the screeching those things make can be called music, but some people were drunk enough to want to try it. Emperor knows how they moved it, even my wife is out of breath from carrying one, but they tried to start a rave with a few. Needless to say, it was a short event, blood was everywhere, a Comisar got involved and I downed a few more bottles I got off of dead morons.

153: Khorne Berserkers are not reliable allies: I know there's a lot of people out there who think that we can defeat Chaos by making them fight among themselves. Sadly I disagree. Chaos loves to clash, but there's always someone keeping them in line when they're fighting us. As such, you can't really rely on Khorne Berserkers always killing their own allies. Hilarious as it may be to watch a steroid abusing prick get halfway through "Blood for the blood god" before taking a chain axe to the teeth, Berserkers would still much rather be killing us. They hate everything, but they hate us slightly more. Oh, it turns out that trying to mimic a cultist's voice while insulting Berserkers from behind a rock doesn't work. And Berserkers have good throwing arms.

154: Rubric Marines don't burn well: With this and the last three, I realize that I've seen more of Chaos that I'm comfortable with. There was this one period, a good five years, where Chaos forces were moving into the the Calixis Sector. It turns out Abbadick doesn't have a monopoly on Black Crusades and these jokers were trying to start one. They came a little too close. Anyway Rubric Marines are dust and maybe a soul inside power armor. Trying to set them on fire is a waste of time. And it puts you in neck snapping distance. And head ripping off distance. I honestly think it was trying to go for a snap and ended up with a rip.

155: Only point a weapon at something you want to kill: You think that this would be obvious, but no. Then again I think it's clear that any training the Guard gets focuses purely on killing and not on staying alive. See the rest of the list for evidence. As it stands, the lasgun is not the most deadly tool of war, but it is still a tool of war. It doesn't matter if it is unloaded, it doesn't matter if you finger is off the trigger, only point the barrel at something you want to burn a hole in. Then again maybe he wanted to kill his mother-in-law. On the other hand, he probably didn't want to kill himself.

156: Valkyries are not for crashing: You see those things on Valkyries? Those are called lascannons and missiles. They're what Valkyries use to kill things. You shoot them at the thing you don't like. You do not suicide bomb enemy positions when you have a full arsenal and haven't taken any damage. Giving your life in the name of the Emperor is one thing, but be smart about it. I mean at the very least you can do one thing. NOT FUCKING MISS!

157: You do not book a visit to the Golden Throne for yourself. You do it for your great-great grandchildren: I told her that the line was longer than she thought it was. Everyone told her that the line was longer than she thought it was. She didn't want to listen. And she tried to cut in line. There's not a list ranking actions by how heretical there are, but if there was, that'd be near the top. It ended with her body being "volunteered" for rations.

158: Remember to take a grave-chute when you jump: I've only been on one or two air-drop missions, they were mainly for encirclement tactics. I think I haven't been on one in awhile because of my wife. Don't tell her I said this but she weighs a lot with all that chrome, the chutes struggle to handle her. Anyway...yeah. Make sure you remember to put one on. You think it's awkward for you? Have you ever had an Ork look up to see where the corpse came from and tut disapprovingly at you? You don't know what that feels like.

159: Kill the Eldar AFTER the alliance has broken down: I've covered this before, Eldar can't be trusted. They'll always turn on us when we form an alliance of convenience, so there's no shame in beating them to it, but you have to know WHEN to stab them in the back. Literally, viciously and repeatedly. Usually it's after you manage to fight off the Necron invasion, not while you're still fighting to hold the line. The squad that killed that Avenger got off easy frankly. It was the Fire Dragons who found them. Their deaths were quick.

160: PRIDE IS FRAKKING WORTHLESS!: Yes I am saying this again because this is a lesson people need to freaking learn! I could start a whole other book filled with people who got killed because of pride. Since I doubt people will pay attention if they don't pay attention to this, I won't do that and instead I'll bring up the worst case I ever had to deal with. Every hear of the phrase "Shit flows downhill?" It's because the people at the top are assholes and we have to deal with it. So let me tell you a story of how we almost lost an entire system because of pride.

It was Tyranids, they had launched an invasion of a system where we had three colonies. We fought long and hard for the planet's surface, and my family was in the thick of the fighting. My daughter was going through hell, the Shadow of the Warp was doing a real number on her. Her sweetheart was keeping her safe, having used up all of her solid rounds and having scavenged a pair of hellpistols. My sister was on top of a burnt pile of gaunts while actively adding to the pile, and Zamora and I were gunning down Gargoyles, Zamora bringing a nice plasma rifle to the party.

But at the end of the day, they were Tyranids, and everything we killed had been sent down just to make us waste ammo. We nearly got killed by a Trygon that a nearby Raven Guard managed to put down, but it just went downhill from there. Now, at that point this is where most people throw in the towel. The Tyranids are a species where mindlessly throwing men at them is the dumbest thing you can do. At this point, you usually write the planet off, flee into orbit, and declare Exterminatus. Oh...but the stupid prick we were stuck with.

He wanted to fight to the last man, to make a suicide charge for the Hive Tyrant, because he had a family estate on that planet and he wasn't sacrificing it. Even though the Tyranids would've grown stronger from our futile struggle and taken the rest of the system. Nearly all of his commanders refused and abandoned the planet, and the Raven Guard were nice enough to provide a cyclonic torpedo to kill the Nids.

Little brat was furious, killed one of his commanders, and was about to keep going when an Inquisitor stepped in. No idea if the guy is still alive now. The Inquisitor dragged him off and he was never heard from again.

See where fucking pride gets you? Be prideful in stupid things that you won't get killed over, like the fact that you managed to somehow raise a kid in this hellhole, and the fact that you somehow managed to keep your family together. That they're all still with you, that you keep them safe and that they keep you safe, and that they make your life worth living.

…Sorry, I need to call it here. I gotta...need to…bye.

Author's Note: I'd like to thank my dear friend Pentralion for helping me with 151. I'd also like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi and xXNanamiXx


	9. Chapter 9

161: Playing peek-a-boo with a Navigator is ill advised: That thing where you go up behind someone and cover their eyes? Yeah, don't do that with a Navigator's third eye. Best case scenario is that they panic and burn your hands off. Worst case scenario is that SOMEBODY does it while we're in the Warp. So when we get thrown hundreds of light-years off course, stranded in the middle of nowhere and half a year from help, we're blaming you. And when we inevitably resort to cannibalism , you're first on the chopping block. At least her liver was good.

162: There is no practical purpose to gold on your armor: Oh I know what you're thinking. "But the Emperor and the Custodians-" yeah well you're not the Emperor, nor are you a Custodian. They can get away with wearing gold armor (Though I'm getting mixed reports on whether the Custodians actually wear armor anymore) because they're gods and demigods of war respectively. We're not. We are fragile little things, and it only takes one or two good shots to take us out. And gold is crap at protecting you, weighs you down, and the shine can give you away. So if you're lugging around a gold plated suit of armor (Fucking Blue Bloods) I'm not acting that sad when it gets pierced by a Gretchen's pea shooter.

163: They are not doing it just to get attention: You'd be amazed how many stupid boys (And I call them boys because many of the ones who try have only seen a battle or two. Older veterans know better. They've been around enough to read the signs) still flirt with my daughter and her sweetheart. They think the kissing is a show for them. Oh, that's cute. You think because you killed ten cultists you're a war hero. Try doing that when they aren't Slaanesh cultists, drunk and high on I don't want to know. Anyway, when you get touchy with one, particularly if you keep going after no has been said, the other is going to be quite mad. If the one you're touching inappropriately doesn't take off your nuts, her special other will. Thankfully most of them wise up after the "no", but there's always the stupid outliers.

164: They still aren't doing it to get attention: Ladies, see 163. Those two men are not kissing in the hopes that it will flood your panties. They either genuinely love each other or just find each other hot and want to fuck. Either way, you're the last thing on their minds. Do not touch their special areas, people do not like being touched there without permission. I'm in the same boat. And no one likes it when you threaten to tattle to a commissar when sodomy is evolved (WE WERE EXPERIMENTING! But the little twat just had to open his mouth. Thank Emperor there was a volcano.) So I'm on their side when they retaliate. Sadly women don't have dicks to cut off, and the tits just aren't as satisfying to go after. So those two had to just go old school and impale her on a drill. Hey. She did say "Fuck my brains out." And they did shove something in a hole until her brains were out. Her mouth for those wondering. So at least she died quickly. And messily.

165: You cannot fight a Chaos Space Marine in melee combat: There is exactly one type of melee combat that will work on a Traitor Marine. An attack from behind, preferably aimed at the power backpack, but even that doesn't always work. As six of my poor ribs found out a few seconds later. Still, it slowed him down enough for my sister to cook him inside his own armor. After my wife had blown a hole open with her heavy bolter. Yeah, see, these things are hard to kill. That one had taken out a tank platoon before we managed to bring him down. And you do not want to be in convenient stabbing range of them, even if they're sorcerers who don't use melee weapons. They can still grab your head and pop it like a loud, annoying boil. And the noblewoman who did it certainly was red enough to be a boil, even before her head was dripping through armored covered fingers.

166: Retreating is not a inherently bad thing: I'd say that members of the Death Korps should put the book down now, but I'm not sure if any of them actually picked it up. And those who did probably wanted to murder me by the end of chapter 2. Anyway, sometimes you just need to retreat. Sometimes you need to regroup or fall back to more fortified positions, or even just throw in the towel when a planet is lost. Sometimes you can't or shouldn't, and there you need to stand your ground and fight. But when you refuse to move back a hundred meters in a barren wasteland to some better cover to avoid being seen as a "coward" then you might as well just drop trousers and wave your dingus at the enemy armies. Hundreds of men died defending a meter high wall of rocks. And the dickhead who ordered didn't. Well. Not for awhile. He got his legs blown off and I decided to ignore his cries for help. I mean there was nothing I could've done to save him, but I didn't let him know that.

167: Ratlings are little vindictive little pricks: Ugh, be polite to the little freaks of nature and they're decent snipers and good cooks. Get on their bad side, and they have ways of torturing you. I had to sniff my soup for a year to make sure no one pissed in it. But sometimes there are the psychos of the species, the one that try and snipe your kneecaps off because you said the grox was overdone. You do not want to be killed by something that doesn't come up to your nipples, ok? Do what I do and bash their heads in with the stock of your rifle the second you realize if they mean you harm. I mean I wasn't in danger, but sticking your cock in my alcohol while guzzling dirty water is where I draw the line.

168: Everyone is not a Lacrymole: Look. I don't even know if these things are real. The Inquisitor who claimed to find them has been discredited, and the records that do talk about Lacrymoles say they were wiped out in the Great Crusade. But if they are real, assuming every last person is one helps no one except them. So drop the paranoia act before you end up like the last person who was convinced they were everywhere. Attempting to assassinate the Warmaster who was tasked with stopping that almost Black Crusade I told you about last time. Yeah, that ended predictably. She put her dagger in his gut. Then dragged it all the way up. She had a major offensive to retake three star systems the next day, with five fortress worlds scattered over them. She was a little on edge and I think appreciated the outlet.

169: Do not make non-tank crews drive tanks: A thousand times, a thousand fucking times I told her. "I do not know how to drive a Leman Russ. I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DRIVE A LEMAN RUSS!" But she stuck me in a tank anyway. I drove as slowly as I could to avoid getting friendly soldiers stuck in the tracks and I was still cleaning guts out at the end of the day. They might have been dead already, but I'm pretty sure I heard someone screaming when the bones were crunching. Anyway, after I got hit by the third rocket I was pulling back when I heard someone calling me a cunt before everything went quiet. I told her that I couldn't drive a tank.

170: Jump Packs are for Space Marines only. Remember when I said that Space Marine bolters shouldn't be used by regular humans? That applies to all Space Marine equipment, but I want to give special mention to the Jump Pack. See, when a Space Marine uses it, it's to bring several tons of metal and muscle down on an unfortunate Ork's head, before a Thunder Hammer caves in the chest of a Nob. Humans are not that durable. So when someone takes one off of a dead Ultramarine (It can happen, amazing right?) it's going to end badly. When he breaks both of his legs on takeoff it's only going to go downhill from there. Though to be frank, him screaming before he smeared himself on the rock face was actually pretty damn hilarious. He got off easy. Chapters don't like it when you steal their war gear. I hear some of them are working on their own version of the Nine Actions, and I don't think he would've liked to be the one who confirmed the rumors.

171: Do not feed the delusions of the Xanthists: Get this. There are Inquisitors who think that we don't use the Warp enough. That's like having a knife stuck in your gut and thinking that the solution is to push it in until comes out the other side. I know that I said that you should not get in the way of Inquisitors, but when a Xanthist Inquisitor is requisitioning your services, do the bare minimum effort. Do what you have to do to technically get the job done and then stop there. Trust me. Anything that the Inquisitor can do to you for being insubordinate pales in comparison to doing what they want and suffering through the resulting fallout

172: Power swords that are off are still swords: You know that sharp edge underneath the power field? Yeah, that's still good for killing people. Apparently whoever invented the power sword wanted the wielder to still be able to fight if the power supply ever ran out. Actually really good design. But the downside is that it isn't idiot proof, as someone snuck into our room when my wife and I were sleeping and decided to take my power sword and play around with it. I had woken up half an hour later and was about to go on the warpath when he snuck back in, trying to clean the blood off of it. He had accidentally decapitated the XO and was trying to pin it on me. Needless to say, I didn't take the dive for him, and the CO demonstrated just how sharp a power sword can be.

173: Defective explosives can still go off at any time: Did the Uplifting Primer not spoon feed you this one? Explosives are finicky things, and the makeshift ones even more so. Sadly I've seen makeshift explosives used more often than I'm comfortable with. On fronts that drag out, sometimes soldiers need to get creative and work with what they have. Never thought I'd see spoons used for shrapnel spread. Hey, it worked. Sadly, soldiers used to proper Forge World mines aren't so good with these less stable explosives. Most of them have the decency to die because it went off when they were trying to plant it. And some people are stupid enough to demonstrate how crappy the explosives are by dancing on it.

174: Drink responsibly: Yes I am talking to you like a teenager, because the target audience for this book seems to be around that mental level. I enjoy a nice stiff one but I'm not an idiot about it. I drink enough to stay sober, only getting fully drunk far from the front lines, if you'll recall the Ork toga party in 52 and my desire to prevent that ever happening again? Alcohol wasn't the sole catalyst there, but it didn't help. And even then I don't really ever get drunk nowadays, because you can't get away with that when you're a father and a husband. Anyway, the guy who died. Let's just say deaths with booze involved tend to be the least dignified deaths, and he died with his ass in the air, naked as the day he was born.

175: Deathstrike launchers should only be used against very distant targets: You don't see these things that much anymore, but they still pop up every now and then. When used properly, these things can decide the fate of battles. A vortex missile hitting a Chaos Titan and sucking it into oblivion has got to be one of the most satisfying things I've ever seen in my life. But these things are hard to use because they have such a wide area of effect, and sometimes you can do more damage to friendly forces than enemies. At the very least don't use it to take out tanks that are only a stone's throw away. I was five kilometers away and I was still in a field hospital for three months after with third degree burns. Thank Emperor that one didn't have a vortex missile.

176: Hive gangers are crap soldiers: These guys are pathetic. They're only really good for walking up to someone with an intimidating look, showing off the gun they stuck in their pants. I'm waiting for one to shoot off his prick. Anyway, when we were rounding up gangsters for the PDF during a rebellion, and they were a sad lot. One tried to intimidate me with his dick gun, so I shot him in the face. The others fell in line after that, but they were a waste of munitions. Couldn't shoot straight, couldn't hold a line, couldn't even reload effectively. The best they could do was soak up shots. So needless to say we aren't breaking through any Eldar lines when these guys were spearheading the assault.

177: Orks do not take human teeth. Also don't bargain with Orks: Turns out the Orks are elitists. They don't want "Punee umen teef" because they aren't good enough for them. I actually saw one puff out his chest and stick his nose up at a handful of human teeth. Like he was a freaking nobleman. And here I thought the Orks were too stupid to have classism. Great. Well at least I can kill these ones. Oh right, and then the woman who was trying to buy a salvaged Leman Russ got her head split open with an axe. I don't know how she expected it to go any other way.

178: Make sure you don't get caught breaking stupid relations regarding trading supplies: This isn't so much a stupid death as it is an embarrassing death. There's nothing stupid about trying to correct a typical Administratum cock-up and getting the supplies that you need. Like the time I needed a dozen grav-chutes and hundred pounds worth of anti-tank charges and got three barrels of acid instead. It was not fun trying to trade that for what I needed. I had to swap around with a dozen different units, and finally I got it. And the Lieutenant who I had given badly needed rifles to was executed. For trying to make sure his men were armed when they went into battle. Like I said. Not a stupid death. Just embarrassing.

179: Ork cybernetics do not work with human bodies: I know Commissar Yarrick did it, but you aren't Yarrick. By all means that scrap metal arm of his should be drooping like a flaccid cock, but somehow he's snapping greenskin necks with it. Maybe he got lucky and got the only arm in the galaxy that the Orks made that works properly, I don't know. The point is, he's the only one who has ever managed to pull it off, every other time has been a complete disaster. As it turns out implanting Ork cybernetics is effectively taking metal shards and hammering them into a stump. Most people die around that point for obvious reasons. The few that were lucky enough to make it off the table...well let's just say that they're defective.

180: Do not imply I am romantically attracted to my sister If you make ONE MORE FUCKING JOKE ABOUT THAT I WILL PERSONALLY FIND OUT HOW MUCH FORCE IT TAKES TO RIP A HUMAN HEAD OFF! Everyone thinks that they're a smart ass. "Oh, you keep spending all this time with your sister, you must be fucking her." Well maybe I don't think with my genitals the way a troglodyte like you does. I imagine I just shattered your world view.

Second of all, yes. I am close to my sister. Life was hard, really damn hard growing up where we did. No I'm not telling you were that is, stop asking. She was the only consistently good thing in my life. She was the one who put that molotov cocktail in our cunt of a father's face. That was, and I'm being completely honest here, the best birthday present I have ever gotten. We had to fend for ourselves from then on out, and sadly enough it was a legitimate step up. But we still had each other.

We got separated at one point. For a decade. It happened when we were keeping that Chaos incursion from snowballing into a Black Crusade. Our frontline base was overwhelmed, sorcerers had snuck behind us and summoned daemons while their main force smashed into us. I saw their leader, an Emperor forsaken Chaos Lord, wadding into our ranks and slaughtering hundreds of guardsman all by herself. I emptied my hellgun's power cell at her while she was busy hacking away at a Space Wolf. Whatever armor she was wearing, whatever the Ruinous Powers did to her, I might as well have been shooting blanks. The only reason she didn't cleave me in half with a single swing of her axe was that she had spotted another Space Marine in the distance and had started a collection of their helmets.

Twelve hours later, that base was in ruins. A million of our soldiers were dead and we were pushed back hundreds of kilometers. We kept losing ground every day. I got separated from her in the first attack. I had no idea if she was dead or not. For five long years we were fighting long, hard battles. We either lost or won hollow victories. 47 planets fell to that Lord's rampage. Six of them we devastated ourselves to deny them to the enemy, four of them we turned to barren husks, two of them aren't there anymore. That incursion lasted five years. Five years without my sister. Five years where I didn't have her to lean on.

I went to a dark place in that time. A very dark place. There are weeks where I don't remember where I was or what I had been doing. I would wake up in a different base, sometimes we had moved up, sometimes we had fallen back. I was almost always covered in blood, sometimes I had burn and stab wounds I had somehow gotten, sometimes an empty bottle. I probably would've been executed if everything wasn't such a confusing mess all over the sector.

It finally came to an end when the Space Wolves arrived in force to break the enemy's back. Bombarding those planets had destroyed a good bulk of the Chaos Forces, and the 4th company had been helping us hold the line from the start. When the whole chapter arrived, we were finally able to push them back. It was the first and only time I had ever seen Logan Grimnar, the Old Wolf, and he was determined to repay a blood debt for the dead of the 4th company. He took the Chaos Lord's arm off and spent the majority of the fight wiping the floor with her. She set a small horde of Daemons on him to get away, and he was up to his armpits in corpses by the time he was done of them.

10% of original Chaos army was all that was left. That was still quite an army though, and the Lord herself was still alive. Apparently with a new arm from the Gods. She set up base on one of the planets she had taken. She's still there today, doing Emperor knows what. She's had a few clashes with the Space Wolves since then, there's a lot of bad blood between them now. I've ever heard some scattered reports that she's trying to form an alliance with Magnus the Red. I have no idea why she didn't turn into a Daemon, but each time I saw her she looked less and less human. I…think she's holding back her transformation. For just the right time.

Anyway, I was able to keep myself going with an enemy like that to fight. Afterwards, I didn't know what do to with myself. I was sent off to fight conflicts that just felt so pointless and small after that. Truth be told, when we were lined up against another damn Ork horde, a suicide charge, I was ready to let one of them bury an axe in my head. I was dead on my feet. But then another soldier freaking out and killed the Commissar. My wife.

Somehow, we ended up talking to each other after that incident. We managed to keep each other sane. Things kind of grew from there, we were leaning on each other. Then, one day, another five years after the Space Wolves ended that war, we managed to meet up again. Yes I cried hard, yes I hugged her for hours, and yes I punched someone who laughed at it. Until my wife came into my life, my sister was the only person I ever really cared about and who really cared about me. We watched each other's backs through utter shit shows. We have a special bond. Do not. Make. Fun. Of. It.

No one has actually died from doing this, but belittle the way we feel about each other and I can fix that.

XXXXXX

Author's Note: Normally I would've put up a preview of this for my patrons, but I wrote this so fast that it was honestly just quicker to put the whole thing up. I'd like to thank my patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi and xXNanamiXx. Might try to do something special for the 200 milestone. Though that's only if I can actually think of something...which would be hard


	10. Chapter 10

181: Hitting emotionally distressed people doesn't help: For some reason there seems to be this conception that if you smack someone who is freaking out, it'll calm them down. Pain does not calm people down. Pain stresses people out even more, and more often than not causes them to lash out. Because when someone hits you, the rational and instinctive response is to hit back. Hard. So when someone just saw their husband get vaporized in front of them and is crying in the corner, you do not walk up to them and slap them. They will bury their bayonet in your groin. Just to make sure, I tried slapping the guy as he waddled around, screaming as the whole gun was swinging from his dingus. Yup, he did not calm down after that. Oh I didn't expect him to, I just wanted to hit him.

182: Black Ships are not luxury cruises: I seriously hope that this idea started because of a cruel prank. If not, I think people are getting stupider as time goes by. But yes, there are honestly people who fake being unregistered psykers in order to get sentenced to a Black Ship. Had a friend set something on fire while he was making funny noises. I think the Lord Captain knew that he wasn't really a psyker when the idiot was dragged off in chains, but wanted to throw him to the Inquisition when they got to Earth. It was kind of funny really. The idiot's smirk started to fade away when he was halfway in the ship and heard the screams of pain.

183: You cannot tough it out: Whenever people get shot there are three responses. Dying, receiving medical treatment as soon as possible, or ignoring it. Granted some people don't treat their injuries because they can't, or don't have supplies. If that's the only reason why you wouldn't treat a wound, just read up on emergency medical techniques and you're golden. But some people like to show off how "manly" they are. One Catachan woman took an axe to the forearm and was walking around showing it off. Said it didn't even hurt. Yeah, three days latter it had turned green and she had to get her arm amputated. And she died anyway. I swear, Catachan women have more insecure masculinity than most male guardsmen, and there's no shortage of it in the guard.

184: Gas masks are to be worn only when needed: Death Korps feel free to ignore me on this, you don't care if you live or die anyway. Actually that's a lie, you do care. Anyway, gas masks. People like to wear them when they're not needed, because they think it makes them look intimidating. Here's a quick list why that's a bad idea. Tunnel vision, hard to breathe, wastes filters, puts the gas mask at risk of being damaged, really this should be enough. The last one is particularly important. A certain SOMEONE tripped and cracked his mask three hours before the chemical shelling began. I had already had a very bad day wading through trenches that were overflowing with the corpses of both cultists and guardsmen, firing my hellgun all the while. And this was during that chaos incursion by that Lord I mentioned, things were really starting to go to shit. I didn't need to stab someone so he couldn't rip my own mask off.

185: No gun tricks: My future daughter-in-law shows off with these things sometimes. When we're in the barracks and she's trying to impress my daughter. So unless you're trying to impress someone (OFF OF THE BATTLEFIELD!) do not attempt any of the following. Spinning your guns, reloading a revolver with every shot, juggling your guns, ricocheting shots, look use your imagination, I'm not coming up with more stupid. The last time I told someone about the more stupid things that I saw with gun tricks, he tried to shoot his lasgun with his tongue. And it overloaded.

186: Aim for vital areas: If you shoot something, you're trying to kill it. You are not preserving the head for a trophy, you are not making it suffer, you are not demonstrating your power. You are killing it. So when we manage to get the drop on a Genestealer and you're shooting it with a krak missile, you are turning it into bloody chunks. Not just taking off a single limb. Mainly because it turns out a Genestealer isn't slowed down at all when it has a missing leg and it'll still disembowel you in half a second. And she was talking about how good the Genestealer head would look on her mantle. I got a single talon, biggest bit that was left after the rest of the squad decided they were more interested in killing it than fucking around. Not that impressive, but it's part of a Genestealer and it makes a good necklace. And my small intestine wasn't ripped out.

187: No lazing around in orbital combat: Some people seem to think that if they're guardsmen, they can just sit around when it comes to ship to ship combat. These people seem to forget that boarding is a thing. And a Chaos cruiser thought it would be fun to have a one night stand with the ship we were on. Half of the guardsmen were ASLEEP! Even though we had been in active combat for the past hour! I had little guilt in shutting the airlocks behind me and spacing them.

188: No gloating: Keep your mouth shut and kill the other guy. If you really need to say something witty, do it after all non allies are dead, and preferably when we're on the Valkyrie out of town. I don't care how smug that Ork is, just shoot him in the head and get on with it. Don't boast how you managed to disarm him and that you'll always remember killing him. He might find out that your head makes for a very good football.

189: No pranking the Astropath: This isn't as bad as messing with the Navigator, but it's still something you should never do. They're the ones who send out that cry for backup, but even if everything is peachy you should let them do their job. One bitch decided to mess with ours by taking a swipe at him with a sword while he was making a transmission not high command. Turns out that when he panics, an Astropath can change "Everything fine," to "the General is a heretic," without meaning to. That wasn't a fun six months.

190: Keep your weapons from overheating: Sometimes you get lucky and you have access to a stockpile of munitions, meaning you can afford you have an itchy trigger finger. Still, some people get the wrong idea. They think just because you have enough ammo to keep a heavy bolter firing indefinitely, they need to have it firing every second. This is a stupid idea. The Tyranid swarm was actually being routed, the Hive Tyrant had been killed by strategic orbital bombardment. This trio of morons kept spraying their bolter from the upper city walls, even as it started to glow and smoke. I managed to realize what they were doing and made a jump to a lower battlement just in time. I broke my arm in a compound fracture, but I got off with a scratch compared to them.

191: Don't put refineries in military bases: I don't know how many base designers are going to read this book, but on the off chance that one picks it up, this is for you. Refineries, hell, anything dedicated to a planet's infrastructure and not directly killing people, has no place in a military base. Refineries are particularly bad because they have a tendency to explode when hit by heavy weapons. We were a good couple of kilometers away from the base and it still nearly burst my ear drums. My sister was pissed. She had gone to the trouble of not using her flamer inside the base and had been cutting up heretics with her chainsword to prevent something like that from happening. All for naught as it turned out.

192: No pets: Question, can it kill something? Can it help you kill something? Can it find supplies. Does it aid us in anyway? If you cannot say yes to any of these things, get rid of it. I met a sanctioned psyker who had a raven that could help him focus the energies of the Warp. Those are the kinds of pets that are ok to have. Anything else is just a waste of time and food. It doesn't help that some people are really stupid about their pets. Some asshole's cat kept clawing my face when I tried to sleep, and then ran out into the middle of an Ork charge because it was stupid. Its owner wasn't much better, he went running after it. It confused the poor Orks, they thought they were supposed to cuddle the owner. After he exploded, I finally understood why the Orks don't have any non Squig pets.

193: Hold it in: For fuck's sake, it's like I'm talking to five year olds. Except I raised a five year old, and she had more common sense than most people in this Emperor forsaken army. If I see one more person die in a way that can be described with "While taking a dump" then I think I might just make a few more entries in this book. People. Remember what mommy and daddy told you. Wait until you can find a toilet. Barring that, wait until the Eldar remember that they're massive cowards to cry every time they lose one of their precious gems and run off. Covering it up by claiming everything went according to plan.

194: You cannot push your soldiers indefinitely: We are not Space Marines. We do not live purely for the sake of fighting. Can we fight for prolonged periods of time? Yes, particularly when our lives are at stake. But eventually something gives. You can't expect a person to fight year after year in a war that seemingly has no end. You need to rotate soldiers in and out so that they can recuperate. Even if it just means stationing them on a peaceful planet. Hell, I spent two decades on one a planet like that. It's where the whole "raising a kid" thing happened. Otherwise, you end up like General Stupid Blonde Bitch. Forcing the same soldiers to fight a losing battle against the Orks for ten years? Belly fully of bayonets.

195: Mounted weapons are mounted for a reason: You know why we tend to fix heavier weapons down? Because it turns out those things are pretty fucking heavy. My wife can lug around a heavy bolter because she's 60% chrome. So unless you're like her, or built like fucking Gunnery Sergeant "Stonetooth" Harker (And you're fucking not) you can't do it. So do not try and lug that lascannon around, because odds are you'll drop it and snap your neck with it. AND HE DID!

196: Do not ride giant animals: Leave the local wildlife alone people, the birds, the worms, and the hulking monstrosities that could eat us in a single bite. Some people on Death Worlds do this as rites of imitation or some crap, but that's a pride thing and I've made me points clear on that. Anyway, they're called DEATH worlds for a reason, so no. You cannot run out into the middle of a desert and hook a giant worm. It will eat you!

197: Nova Cannons are unreliable: I get the appeal of Nova Cannons, nuclear ordinance at light speed? A nice bit of fuck you to whoever we're aiming at. If we can pull it off. As it turns out, these things are hard to aim, so there's a good chance your Emperor patented fuck you shot will miss the Tau warship and zoom off into space. And that's if we don't get unlucky and just have the warhead explode on the ship. Yeah, funny thing about these kinds of weapons, they're very precise and even minor damage can fuck with them pretty badly. Particularly the Jovian Pattern. If we're under siege by the twat headed Tau, I'm under enough stress without our flagship spontaneously combusting. Even if I'm surrounded by officers I'll take a drink. And I won't get in trouble because they'll want a sip when I'm done.

198: Stealth is not for cowards: Hey dumbass. Do you consider Corvus Corax to be a coward? No, you wouldn't, be cause he's a Primarch. And for some reason what's good enough for a Primarch isn't good enough for some people. They don't want to inch along in the dirt where no one can see us. Nooooooo, they want to stand up, fire their weapon into the air, and let out a scream of rage. Right before they get shot in the face by a Necron flayer. And get a bunch of other people shot in the face by Necron flayers too.

199: The point of war is not to simply kill the enemy: Don't get me wrong, the end goal of the Imperium's mission across the galaxy is the death of all cultists and xeno. The problem is that it isn't as simple as landing on a planet and killing everything you see. We need to focus on tactical and strategic objectives and get to the killing later. But some commanders (Like MOTHERFUCKING KUBRIK CHENKOV) don't have a single intelligent thought in their head. It's just "kill kill kill," and not killing is regarded as a personal disgrace. These are the type of people who, and I swear to the Emperor this happened one time, try to launch an invasion of the Eye of Terror. I think they got a light-year in before being torn apart at the molecular level.

200: Don't overestimate your Titans: Titans are weapons that turn the tides of war. One being fielded can turn an entire army into corpses, and cause a planet to change hands. But they inspire overconfidence, and someone stupid enough can waste something that powerful. I've got very clear memories of something just like that happening. Thankfully it's a happy memory.

Remember that Chaos Lord I mentioned? When her offensive lost its momentum, smaller warlords splintered off from her forces. They were never as much of a threat as her, but they were still a thorn in our side. Lessened by the fact that they were kind of stupid. Fifty years after that almost Black Crusade, only one was left. An ambitious woman who had tried to usurp the Lord. Her rebellion was…short lived.

This wannabe warlord was sent packing from the Lord's planet with half of her men dead. Frustratingly enough, the Lord left her warships intact. I think because the Lord was damn smart, and knew that her former servant would have to flee into Imperial territory. And she did. Fortress worlds had been established along the border, and the one I was stationed at was put to the test.

We held the line for three months. The navy was oddly competent and managed to turn most of the Chaos navy to ash. Sadly they did it after the ground forces had landed and managed to overrun one of the major cities. We kept them contained most of the time. Whittling them down, playing defense and letting them throw themselves at us futilely. Then they got desperate.

The loaded up their last Titan with everything they had and pushed forward, all of their forces right behind it. The warlord hadn't been able to break our lines before, she was too cautious to risk enough men, but she was desperate now. Our front lines broke after she drowned us in her men's corpses, the Titan spearheading the assault. She pushed onward, not bothering to cover the Titan from behind. That was where everything went wrong for her.

My family and friends had been in a bunker, a complex one you could only find on a fortress world, build just in case the city had to be surrounded. The entrance was blocked by the Titan's initial rampage, and it took half an hour to clean it. When we got out, the Titan had its back to us, as did the entire Chaos army.

Most of the people in the bunker were wounded, so we had no idea what to do. Until we spotted a Shadowsword. It was shot up all to hell, half of the guns were offline, but the main cannon still worked. A Volcano Cannon. It took a few minutes to turn the thing around (Still don't know how to drive tanks), but when we brought it to bear, we managed to get a shot off. Cleaved through the leg. It fell right on top of the Chaos forces.

We should not have been able to do this. We spent five minutes turning around a flaming tank. A single frag grenade and we all would've been dead. But that warlord was focused on running dick first into our second line. No wonder she was crushed by the Lord so easily. Pretty freaking pathetic. She accomplished nothing but turning that Titan into her tomb. Well there was one other thing. My daughter and her sweetheart ended up getting married on the ruins of that thing. They thought it was romantic. Not what I had in mind but hey, whatever floats their boat.

Author's Note: Once again, I'd like to thank EP for inspiration in the form of 191, although it generally could be taken as a criticism of Command and Conquer type games.

I'd like to thank my Patrons SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, and Ryan Van Schaack for their amazing support.


	11. Chapter 11

201: Let Dreadnoughts sleep: You know that saying, "Only in death does duty end?" Dreadnoughts are Space Marines who said, "Meh, I can still keep going." As such, Space Marines who are still whole tend to not ask much of them, letting them sleep in until shit hits the fan. They do like to tell tales of their youth sometimes, but that's on their terms. They don't appreciate blue blood prats stamping on the door to their stasis chambers, demanding story time. I gained a great deal of respect for the Space Wolves that day. It turns out they don't give a flying fuck if you're a blue blood or not. You burn just as well either way.

202: You cannot take on greater Daemons with a knife: I really don't know why the Hell humanity has lasted as long as it has when people like this are allowed to breed. Maybe after ten-thousand years we finally ran out of smart people and now we're stuck with this. Anyway, remember the time I ran into a Lord of Change? And then ran as fast as I could in the other direction? Some lady wanted to stay and fight, saying that she had a dagger that had been given to her by a Space Marine and had been blessed by the Emperor. Yeah, she got her head shoved up her own ass. The Lord of Change turned her bones to mush first, then spent the next few minutes making balloon animals with her. Credit where credit is due, she did keep him busy long enough for the rest of us to escape.

203: Red ones do not go fucking faster: Why are we trying to copy the Orks? When has that ever been a good idea? Because needless to say, painting a Leman Russ or a Chimera red does very little to increase the total KPH! The most likely result is you getting in trouble with the Administratum for wasting all that red paint. Which usually results in all of your regular supplies getting cut off and with you being turned into an Ork hood ornament because you couldn't load your lasgun!

204: You have other war assets besides infantry. FUCKING KUBRIK CHENKOV! I sadly can't put him on this list because for some Emperor forsaken reason is still alive. People, let's take a look at what we have. Tanks the size of city blocks, Imperial Knights, Space Marines, APCs, regular tanks, artillery that can pound defenses into atoms, and a navy that can crack planets. USE IT! Don't just send a hundred-thousand people to smash against a wall, without even giving them demolition charges! Because, as it turns out, you kinda NEED those men when the enemy makes their counter-attack!

205: Rivalries are fucking worthless: This is really close to the whole pride thing, but it happens so often that it deserves its own entry. Rivalries between various units. They're stupid and they need to stop. Some people say that they help motivate people to perform at their best, to show up the ones they're competing with. Here's your motivation, living. Fight with everything you have and you live, that's all the motivation that you need. This isn't about maximizing efficiency, it's about dick measuring. And more than once it has ended with things turning violent, usually resulting in deaths. If we're murdering each other on the ship to the battlefield, we're making the enemy's job easier. Think. Think and put your cock away.

206: Explosions hurt: I remember when I was young. Thinking I could just watch with a smirk as I detonated the charge on a rebel Leman Russ. I had snuck around behind their lines and wanted to watch the show when I pulled the trigger. Two seconds later, I was lying on the ground with both of my eardrums ruptured. I was deaf for half a year. As it turns out, explosions have shockwaves in addition to plain old fire, and it's usually more powerful than it looks. So be careful when using that shit people. I know some suicide bombers don't care if THEY die, but the idea of suicide bombing is to hurt the ENEMY! Not your allies!

207: You are not above kissing ass: I have a ton of shit to say about Inquisitors, blue bloods, Ultramarines and Emperor knows what else. I pretty much never express it outside of this book and private conversations. Because usually when you're dealing with someone that has a great deal of power over you, the best thing you can do is get on your knees and kiss ass. It sucks, I know, wash your mouth out afterward. I've gotten a handful of licks in over the decades, but those are few and far between and only when I was sure no one would learn about it. So don't tell an Inquisitor to go fuck themselves. It will not end well.

208: Do not write heretical stories about the Primarchs: I do not want to know who the hell wrote these. But stop. No, Horus didn't do Robert in the ass. Rogal Dorn and Perturabo did not spend the three weeks and six days of the Iron Cage viciously doing each other on top of a Space Marine orgy! Alpharius Omegon DID NOT FORNICATE WITH HIMSELF! The Adeptus Ministorum is getting pissed about this people! Stop giving them a reason to set things on fire! Or at least hide them like you will this book.

209: Speed is a life saver: Do you sometimes walk slowly for dramatic effect? If so, please kick yourself in the balls for me. If you lack them, punch yourself in the tit. If you lack those, just bang your head against the nearest wall. Speed is of the essence! No fancy formations, you're not the Mordian Iron Guard, don't pretend that you are, no pausing, no posing, NONE OF IT! Snipers seem to love picking off these people, and I can't blame them. If I saw someone dropping to one knee and holding his rifle over his head just to look cool, I'd blow his brains out too.

210: Fully grown adults make better soldiers: I know, I know, everyone needs to contribute at ties, but you do know that kids are shitty soldiers right? They never stop whining, they eat too much, sleep too much, can't aim straight, what's the point of it? All it does is make us rely on sub-par soldiers, of which we have way too many already! How many men did we lose to Tyranids because we were giving them a junior feast when we needed someone to defend our right flank!

211: Do not underestimate Vanus assassins: Of the six assassins, the Vanus are easily the least intimidating. They can't fry the brains of psykers, they can't put a shot in your heart from five kilometers away, they can't assume the appearance of your best friend, and they aren't murder machines on Emperor knows how many drugs. Hell, even the Venenum assassins are more intimating, seeing as how they can kill you with a scratch. That being said, these guys are hardly pushovers, even if they are more number crunchers than fighters. So I'd like to remind guardsmen that this isn't the Schola Progenium where the rich jocks pick on the scrawny nerds. Three guardsmen thought that they'd pick on the bookworm. He later complained that the ten seconds it took to slit all their throats could've been better spent calculating the probability of my right ball recovering. Ok, he was kind of an asshole.

212: Do not be within a ten kilometer radius of an Eversor Assassin: The Vanus Assassin was the only assassin I ever had a personal encounter with. I'm going to cover all of the major branches of the Officio Assassinorum, but the other five assassins are second hand references. An inquisitorial initiate who works closely with them was my source. I know the guy…moderately well. Anyway, if you can make eye contact with an Eversor, you're too close. These things are as close as the Imperium has gotten to creating "Murder in a Box." They pretty much kill everyone that moves and try to kill quite a few things than don't. Some people apparently really want to see this first hand. Yeah…don't. According to my source, it turns out that claw of theirs can stretch the human jaw farther than you think.

213: Don't screw around near Vindicare Assassins: I thought I made it clear that you shouldn't touch Chaos weapons way back when. Or Ork weapons. And that you should be careful with xeno weapons in general. But some people just think it's fun to play dress up with Eldar helmets or Chaos headdresses. And when they're doing a poor imitation of a Nurgle dance, the practically automate assassin, who has killed fifty cultists in the last half hour, will up his kill count to fifty-three. From what I heard, they were getting frisky, so the Inquisiton might be concerned about some bizarre Nurgle, Slannesh hybrid cult too.

214: Don't do anything to Culexus Assassin: These people can make heads explode. That should be enough for most people to leave someone alone. But because they're Blanks, (or Nulls, or Pariahs, or Untouchables or whatever the fuck you call them) some people want to pick a fight with them. Just this feeling around them. Look, my daughter gets physically fucking ill around Blanks, and she doesn't start shit with them. And Culexus Assassins are a cut above the rests. Non-psykers think they can gang up on them because they're immune. No one told them that they can make non-psyker heads just as well. All twenty-three of them. You think they would've learned after the tenth.

215: Be picky when Venenum Assassins are in the area: The Venenum Assassins, you don't hear much about them. They tend to poison enemy water supplies and watch as they die by the thousands. Nice, effective way of depopulating enemy armies, particularly when the poison is slow acting. That way, by the time people start getting sick, everyone in the area has already taken a sip of the water. The problem is that these people take their poisons seriously, and sometimes they can last for months, even years. So maybe, JUST MAYBE, you shouldn't drink water from the river surrounded by ten-thousand dead cultists! WHEN THE IMPERIUM TOOK THE CITY THREE DAYS AGO!

216: You cannot fuck Callidus Assassins: I swear, the female dominated units in the Imperium are mainly talked about in regards to sex, and it never ends well for the people who do it. It ends badly when you do it for the Sisters, and ends even worse for the Callidus Assassins. To be frank, I don't want to hear about how tight their outfits are at the best of times. Maybe it's because I'm an old pile of bones, but whenever I think sexy thoughts, I tend to keep them to myself. I don't really care what other people think of them, nor do I really want others to know how I picture my wife when I'm alone…don't you fucking read into that. Anyway, just remember this. One could be right behind you. And they don't like it.

217: If you can masterfully infiltrate a cult, you were probably a prime candidate: Kind of self explanatory. Was once part of a ten man team who was infiltrating a local cult so we could find their headquarters and bomb it. One lady got a LITTLE too into it. Was a little too good at making baby soup, was awfully quick to pick up painting runes in blood, and was disturbingly eager when the goat came out. Granted I don't know for sure that she was a cultist, but she was halfway through the goat ceremony when her nipples turned into tentacles. Yeah, the rest of the team and I got the frak out of there and called in the strike. I find it telling that no one questioned our decision to leave tentacle tits behind.

218: Use two hands for your weapons: You can ignore this if you have a recoil glove or a good cybernetic arm. Otherwise, two hands per weapon jackass. My daughter-in-law has to make use of recoil gloves half the time, and after years of training she is only just now figuring out how to effectively dual wield weapons without them. So please, no trying to hold a lasgun in each hand. Unless you're a Space Marine, you're going to look like you're just waving a pair of dicks around. Particularly when you slap yourself in the face with them and blow your brains out.

219: Look both ways before crossing roads: Yes, because apparently we've regressed that badly in the last ten-thousand years. Seriously. Leman Russ tanks can move fast, but not THAT fast. Make sure you don't get in the way of one, otherwise you'll get crushed, spat out, and converted into emergency rations. I talked to the tank crew after one dipshit did this while drunk, and apparently they're just used to it. Because half of humanity is apparently collectively blind and death. I think the Imperium may have failed in its mission to keep the human genome pure.

220: Don't get involved with the Black Templars if you can: The Black Templars do the Emperor's work and they do it well. But they are FUCKING INSANE! For some reason or another, my family got roped into one of their crusades. I honestly can't remember, I think that they were in the neighborhood and half of the local commanders volunteered us. The next eight years of my life after that were an utter blur.

I remember that we managed to get into battles with most of the Imperium's, although thankfully the Necrons were a no-show. That was about the only comforting thing about it. The Black Templars are great at carving through enemy territory, but it's hardly a cost free advancement. At least two members of my family were recovering from massive injuries at any given time. Again. I think.

The whole thing was such a damn adrenaline rush, with the Templars considering any time that they weren't killing the Emperor's enemies to be time wasted. All I remember was constantly fighting while the Templars kept doing crazy shit. I'm pretty sure one of them beat a Nob to death. With me. That's without getting into how one boarded an upper rampart by throwing my sister and wife up there, one tied Zamora to the front of his bike so that she could act as extra firepower, and the happy young couple actually got used as makeshift projectiles. They used a sling.

Look, we took back a lot of territory for the Emperor in those years. But it's kind of a thankless job and I think the Templars could've done it on their own. And more effectively without it thinking other people will solve their problems. After all, I was that Marine's fourth "club"

Author's Notes: Thought I'd put this up at the same times as From the Ashes

I would like to thank my Patrons SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, and Ryan Van Schaack for their amazing support.


	12. Chapter 12

So. Cadia. Yeah. FUCK! Well, we were always fucked to some degree, but I didn't think I'd live to see things get this bad.

221: Don't give someone a gun so they can "do it themselves.": You may think you're being noble. You found a deserter, a traitor or just a plain old heretic. They ask you to give them a gun so that they can be the ones who end their own life. You pat yourself on the back, think that you may be stern, but at least you have a good heart. And then that heart gets three bolt rounds in it because you gave the local murderer a bolt pistol. Then he kills two more people and blows my foot off before my daughter-in-law can bring him down. The asshole was lucky it was the foot I had already lost.

222: War is the last place for political warfare: What is wrong with people? We have enough enemies outside the Imperium trying to murder us all, why are so many leaders in the Imperium trying to make their job easier? I could write a separate book about the number of times nobles, guild leaders and rich merchants were fighting among each other while the local murder party of the week was knocking at the front door. It's quite a feeling to be holding the front line against Chaos, keeping them from getting anywhere else on the planet, and you're left wondering why the hive city behind you WENT UP IN ATOMIC FUCKING FLAMES! And it turns out it was because Lord Whocares and Lady Notme were setting their soldiers on each other due to them fighting for control of the assets of a third noble who had died without a will when both of them were related to him by marriage. Things apparently escalated quickly. The things people waste their time on while other people are bayonet deep in someone else's guts.

223: Don't trust a word of Ultramarine propaganda: Emperor on his Throne, he must be weeping at what these twats have become. I know I said that you should accept their help if you could, but that doesn't make them any less full of shit. If them saying their scouts were better than veterans of other chapters weren't a big enough giveaway, I'm fairly certain they just make things up to stroke their infertile/nonexistent/whatever's going on down there dicks. Hell, it's so bad, I honestly didn't think that Guilliman had returned until I had an Inquisitor swear it to me (Well, I was in the crowd that she was swearing it to.) Still, I'd recommend healthy skepticism, because thinking ten Ultratwits can turn back a million Eldar is what gets people to make suicidal frontal charges. Suicidal charges that even Cato isn't stupid enough to take. (Also yeah, Guiliman is back. Some good news for a change. Also apparently he made a deal with some sort of Dark Angel…just…just remember 12.)

224: Necrons are not your friends: Why. The fuck. Do people. Think. This. Is. possible? Some bullshit about the Blood Angels being best buddies with them? First of all, whoever started that rumor is probably having their genitals slowly inverted by the Inquisition right now. Second of all-NO! 99% of the things are mindless automatons who will vaporize you at the atomic level on the basis that you need to maintain homeostasis. It doesn't matter how pretty the cake you bake is, they're going to blast it, and you, all over the room.

225: Plants can kill you: I still think plant grenades are one of the most worthless things in existence, but plants are still deadly on some fucked up worlds. I just think that anything a plant grenade does to a plant can also be accomplished by an incendiary grenade, and they incendiary grenade tends to be more flexible. But yeah, when stepping onto a planet, particularly a death world, there's a chance that the plants can shoot needles, strangle you, impale you, or sometimes just fucking blow up. So no picking flowers for your significant other. That one time all four of the above happened…yeah, we promptly abandoned the planet after that. Fuck it, let the Tyranids have it. They actually ended up losing more biomass to the flora than they managed to get back.

226: Don't assume Eldar are automatically friends now: So, apparently there's this thing called the Ynnari all of a sudden. I've never seen them directly, but apparently it's Harlequins, Craftworld Eldar, Dark Eldar and Corsairs all marching under one banner, and apparently they've been helping out Imperial units. I can't comment, as I say, I haven't seen them. What I CAN say though, is that there are still plenty of Dark Eldar running around the galaxy with their dicks and/or twats out and I imagine Corsairs are still stabbing contractors in the back, and the Craftworld are still arranging the deaths of planets so that one squad of theirs won't die. So try and make contact if the Eldar army looks like a rainbow vomited all over them, but otherwise shoot to kill, same as always. Some people think we're on good terms, walk right up to them, and then get shredded into bite sized pieces by their psykers.

227: Warfare is more than just bombing the shit out of everything: There was a ten year long rebellion that happened somewhere in the far reaches of the Imperium at one point. Three star systems that came together and promptly rebelled. The general in charge of putting it down barely had anything to work with (because of the thousands of wars actively going on in the Imperium at the time, his was near the bottom in terms of importance) but he was still making progress. Managed to firmly secure one of the systems and had taken a couple of planets in the second. Then he died and his successor (murderer) was a lot less competent. Lost nearly all of her predecessor's gains and got pushed back to one planet. I got sent in around the point where she just started ordering orbital and air strikes on everything. One rebel in a city block? Bomb it. One platoon somewhere in that collective of plantations? Bomb them. That city is in enemy hands? Bomb it until there's nothing left. So, she "defeated" the rebels and handed those systems back to the Imperium. Those systems whose infrastructure, ecosystems and population were now utterly gone. I think the Planetary Governors that were sent in to rebuild still have to keep her a part of her body in their offices as a reminder.

228: Scythes are not practical weaponry: Have you ever actually held one of those things? I have, it ended with me on my ass a lot and everyone laughing at me. Nearly took my own head off. See, these things are farming tools. They're kind of crap when it comes to killing the enemies of man. I know that Mortarion used one, but we don't copy the forces of Chaos for a good reason. I'm not going to judge a desperate farmer who's trying to defend his home with whatever he could find in the heat of the moment, but members of the guard should know better. And it's kind of sad that, when Chaos came calling, the farmer was smart enough to switch to a shovel (with sharpened edges no less, thing was pretty good at snapping necks) while a dozen of the Emperor's finest panicked, raided the tool shed, charged, and promptly got massacred. Still, at least the farmer ended up joining his local militia afterward because it turned out he was actually pretty good in a fight. I think he made lieutenant.

229: Look before you jump: Often dropships have you land you in hot territory, particularly during the opening days of an attack on a hostile planet. Those things are big, fast and powerful, and pinpoint maneuvers are damn near impossible to pull off when you're under fire. So you may want to double check to make sure that you're actually going to land on solid ground instead of, say, thin air because you're nowhere near the cliff. Or deep water in heavy combat gear when you were supposed to be landing on a beach. I'll never forget the one time when I was young when I was about to jump, realized that I was about to jump into a fucking volcano, and spent the next five minutes trying to scramble back into the dropship, hanging on for dear life.

230: Avoid melee frontal combat if possible: I'm not saying that melee combat is unavoidable, nor that you shouldn't train for it. Heck, melee combat from behind on an enemy that is mainly using ranged weaponry can be devastating. But do you know what two forces clashing in mainly melee combat is? Hundreds of people viciously trying to jam bits of sharp metal into everything they can reach. In the panic, you can get blindsided by something you didn't see, stab a friendly by mistake, or just get buried under a pile of corpses. It's a clusterfuck where skill goes out the window in favor of frantic person to person combat and split second decision making. I swear, every single time i've been in one of those situations I almost died and I think I killed maybe two people that I was supposed to kill. That's still better than the lady next to me, who tried to run forward and accidentally impaled herself on someone else's spear. The guy was just as shocked and surprised as I was.

231: Keep your fucking hair short: This is a gender neutral topic, I've seen plenty of men who grow their hair out and it ended just as badly then. It's particularly popular among some more tribal civilizations in the Imperium, and it never stops being stupid. It's a perfectly good handle for enemy soldiers to grab and pull on. So unless you want an Ork to twirl you like a pocket watch until your scalp gets ripped off, shave your damn head.

232: Honor bets made in the guard: Look, we don't have a lot going on when we're not killing and dying, and betting and gambling are two of the few things we have to keep us busy. One prick made a bet with me that he could kill two dozen men with one shot. I called his bluff. Then he shot the power cell to an enemy plasma cannon with a hot shot round. Fifty enemy men dead. He drank all of my booze rations for a month. Why? Because I honored that I lost that bet. People get pissy if you don't. I've seen people knifed over bets with lower stakes than a month of alcohol rations. Fifty-two times to be precise. Wait a minute, something's going on in the other room, I'll finish this chapter tomorrow. Well, sorry about that. It's fifty-three now by the way.

233: Fuck honor among brothers and sisters and arms: If someone does worthy of snitching on, then snitch on them. Ok, this deserves a little bit of clarification. If it's something minor that isn't really a big deal, like sneaking a pie from a civilian windowsill. However, if someone in your unit is a MURDERER who slit the throat of a civilian, then you fucking report them. No, I don't care if that person is your brother in arms, fuck him, either turn him in to the commissar or do the job yourself. Because guess what? Murderers are bad people and tend to kill people who know too much about their crimes. Like that idiot. I told him to turn him in, but he wouldn't listen to me. Didn't want to be a snitch. Didn't want to be a snitch…oh grow the fuck up. That whole mindset was probably started by a selfish cunt to guilt trip his friends into not turning him in after he stuck his cock in the Emperor's ribcage anyway.

234: Only take prescribed drugs, and even then be smart about it: I already talked about Dark Eldar drugs, and the only practical use for them is loading them into a trebuchet if you're defending a feudal world. However, I need you people to use your brains for three seconds and to not inject yourself with whatever depraved happy juice you managed to get your hands on. This includes Tranq, Obscura, Grinweed, Spook, Gladstones, Frenzon, Psychon, Spur, Fury, Somna, Opiatix and Kalma. Yes, these are all real. Some are illegal, some are combat stimulants, and you should be taking none of them unless you have to. If you need to scratch an itch, smoke a fucking Lho-stick. Yeah, it'll kill you, but only decades down the line and if you smoke them obsessively, so at least you won't get other people killed.

235: Once again, no writing heretical texts about the Primarchs, even if they're traitors: Look, I know all nine of the traitor Primarchs need to die in a fire, but this is getting absurd. Now I'm getting some word about how there's a rumor that Fulgrim was anally penetrated as part of a torture session. Now look, we need to have standards, even if it is Fulgrim we can't…oh…oh…I have just been informed that that DID actually happen. Oh…huh…..WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS GALAXY!?

236: Do not believe the latest Imperial propaganda campaign: Emperor's balls, I know the Historical Revision Unit is lousy at the best of times, but this is a new low. Apparently it was penned by someone called C.S…something or other. It was mainly in regards to Eldar and Emperor's mummified testicles it was idiotic. It included such gems as a Fire Prism being disabled by rocks (I have seen them take a direct blast from a Leman Russ Executioner and keep going) Fire Warriors not being able to punch through a shitty barricade (One shot at me when I was on the other side of a fortress wall and I was in the hospital for months with third degree burns afterward) and them being killed with sharp sticks (just fucking no.) Also, it got really creepy. I have no love for Xeno and think the Eldar are twats, but there was a deeply detailed description of one being tortured to death that made me queasy. We're not Slannesh cultists for fuck's sake, we have standards. If you aren't interrogating an alien for information, just put a las bolt in their head and call it a day. And underestimating the Eldar the way C.S. what's his face did is a quick way to get vaporized. Also, according to him Tyranids make donkey like noises. Fucking what?

237: Stop spreading bullshit about Ciaphas Cain: So some people have been suggesting that Ciaphas Cain is secretly a coward. HAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA! HA! HA! HAAAAAAAAAA! Yeah, the guy, dueled Chaos Space Marines, survived fighting Genestealers and Hive Tyrants, that blew up an entire Necron tomb world, is a coward. Yeah. Good one. I'd recommend you drop this one guys. His girlfriend is an Inquisitor. I don't think she'd appreciate you spreading this bullshit about him.

238: Suicide is a last resort only: I know plenty of people say you should save the last shot for yourself when it comes to fighting Dark Eldar and Slannesh. This is true, but the key part of that sentence is "last shot." You're supposed to fight as long as you can first, only turning the gun on yourself at the last moment, when all hope is lost, to avoid a fate worse than death. Not before then. Jumping the gun leads to stupid moments like when there's an explosion at the center of our base, we think the Dark Eldar have finally cracked out defenses, and a hundred people form and carry out a suicide pact before it turns out that one of the reactors was just faulty. It was premature, to say the least.

239: Make sure your disguises don't suck: Infiltration is something that's semi-common in the Imperium, although it tends to take a backseat to all out invasions. That being said, when you do end up doing it, put a little bit of fucking work into it. Don't go into a mob of Chaos soldiers and loudly talk about heretics, that never ends well. It's even worse when you're in a Tzeench crowd and you scream "praise Nurgle." Turns out Chaos can be just as preachy, judgy and violetnly insecure as the Imperium. Go figure.

240 Mixing different regiments together can't be done idly: The general approach to forming regiments is to have them all be from the same planet. The problem is that, once they're deployed off world, they're pretty much never getting reinforcements from that planet again. We just can't afford to send reinforcements halfway across the galaxy every time it happens. So units that sustain heavy losses commonly recruit from local worlds, but in extreme circumstances, they're merged with another unit. This only works if you put a lot of thought into it.

See, after the Horus Heresy, Imperial Guard regiments were made highly specialized so that one commander couldn't say, "Hey, I need more tentacles growing out of my asshole,"and take an entire army with him. As such, most regiments are good for one role and that's it. We can't really slap heavy infantry in with guerrilla fighters and expect it to work out. Either the heavy troops are going to hang a bright neon sign over the others that say, "shoot here" or the guerrilla fighters will be meat shields, low quality ones at that. Now if the heavy infantry had been paired up with, say, a tank regiment, that would've been a nice combo. The tanks could act as a spearhead to deliver heavy infantry behind enemy lines where they can do the most damage. Yet people keep jamming regiments together without thinking about it it. In fact, some people take it even further.

Imagine a regiment where, after every major engagement, they absorbed soldiers from weakened or broken regiments. Even if it's just three shell shocked amputees, they take them. Now imagine this regiment gets kicked around from front to front, in order to experiment with how a random mishmash of shellshocked rejects go up against everything the galaxy has to offer. That's what life for me is like now.

Of the hundred experimental regiments created, 20% are still in operation. (In actuality anyway, the Administratum says that 60% are still going. In other words, they're rebuilding them from scratch.) I was lucky enough to be stuck with one for the last few decades. There's enough of an influx of fresh blood to keep it going. "Good" old 23rd EDR (Experimental Deployment Regiment) got enough people that could mesh reasonably well together. We were part of the luckier ones. And I would just like to remind you people that I got a third of my examples from within the 23rd EDR. Even after that, I consider us luckier than most of the other EDRs. At least we didn't have to deal with getting thrown into the middle of a Ork/Tyranid murder orgy to see if we could come out on top. The 81st through 100th EDRs did that. They never came back.

XXXXX

Author's Note: I'm actually reading Gaunt's Ghosts for the first time, and 221 was based on a scene in Necropolis. Thankfully it ended better for Gaunt, as he was faster with a power sword than the other guy was with the pistol. Still, Gaunt is a total badass, but that was a REALLY dumb move on his part. In fact, quite a few of these were written with Gaunt's Ghosts in mind. Also, I thought I'd have a little fun with 237 and the author not knowing as much as he thinks he does for once.

I would like to thank my Patrons SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, Ryan Van Schaack, and RaptorusMaximus for their amazing support


	13. Chapter 13

241: No Basilisk charges: I know they're technically called Basilisk tanks, but lets wake up and stop pretending the Emperor's existence mean we can act on every last infantile instinct without the universe putting its boot up our collective asses. They're artillery pieces. We do not throw them at front lines Yes, you "can" technically have them adjust their cannons so that a forward assault is "possible" but can and possible do not get rid of stupidity. Basilisks are just too damn fragile for that, and every time an idiot thinks that the best way to worship the Emperor is to blindly charge at the enemy (I have to say, I missed the page in the Lectitio Divinitatus where he encourage this crap) and to die a stupid and pointless death. For the Emperor or something. You'd think that the Emperor would want you to take the Basilisk and actually do something useful with it, but no, according to the inbred donkey children (Tyranid donkey children possibly) he wants us to throw our lives away pointlessly. I'm disgusted that so many people have such a low opinion of the Emperor's intelligence. Still, they're all dead now. They can beg for his forgiveness.

242: You cannot kill a Baneblade with a power sword: Emperor on his throne give me strength. People think that because Saint Sabbat did it, they can do it. She was a fucking reincarnation of a SAINT! The Emperor's light was flowing through her! So I'm not surprised that she was able to slice off the tank's cannon and then impale the driver. YOU! ARE NOT! HER! Baring the trillion to one half chance that this book found its way into the hands of Saint Celestine (If that somehow happened, it's a privilege to have you back), YOU ARE NOT A LIVING SAINT! You trying to charge a Baneblade with a sword, even if it is a power sword, is akin to the Orks throwing rocks at Necrons, except it doesn't end with the upside of dead Orks. And the blood stains are harder to get out of the city streets. What? They put me on sanitation a lot.

243: You cannot destroy Chaos from the inside: Some people think that they're smart and that they can infiltrate cultists. Maybe for a day or two you can pull it off, but after that things just start utterly falling apart on you. You get found out, you have to kill a baby because Chaos can't cum unless an infant has been murdered, or you just get killed in Chaos infighting. But even if you can get beyond that point, there's still the problem of actually dealing with the gods. What are you going to do? Try and stab them in the back? Ask Skarbrand how that works out. Oh wait Khorne punted hm across the galaxy. Please don't try and tangle with Khorne, I can't handle another entry. I do not want to know what it looks like when the god of war puts his boot up a human ass.

244: Remember that hidden weapons are a thing: So often a person is demanded to leave their weapons at the door, to prevent assassination attempts. This seems like a foolproof way to stop it, but sadly it isn't. Generations of tinkerers have found new and inventive ways to slip the tools of murder into secure locations, and they're just getting better. There's this thing called a soft sword now, that can take on the appearance of a piece of cloth until it hardens into a blade. So just assume everyone in a secure location has a hidden weapon, don't just stand around relaxing, because it's fucking embarrassing if I have to explain to someone about how three guards were murdered with a man's underpants.

245: No, you cannot have a motorcycle: No. Stop asking. I don't care how cool you think you look. If you want one that bad, save up your backpay and buy one when you retire. On the battlefield, they're utterly useless. Light, unarmored, exposed, and unarmed. Not a single thing it's good for. Except maybe scouting and message running. So yes, if we're on a planet where the racket of the local wildlife is so loud that it drowns out the roar of an engine, or every single vox and micro-bead was have breaks, then you can use a motorcycle. Then get killed in three seconds by a Ork who thought you were challenging him to a race.

246: Kroot weapons suck: Hey, get this. The Kroot work for a fairly advanced alien race, and still use their shit weapons back from when they were stuck on their home planet. Oh sure, the rounds do more damage now, but I got a hold of one (this was back during my first mission that I mentioned in 67) and I got off six shots before I realized it was slightly more powerful than my lasgun and held around one tenth of the ammo. Because those six shots were all it had, and it was fully loaded. Oh, but it had a blade on it. I guess the Tau suck so much at close quarters combat they thought that was impressive. So yeah, don't bother, not when they so often pal around with Tau. The horse-people have much better guns to steal, (fuck me, I'm turning into an Ork). Just remember 67

247: Keep your fucking helmet on: I know I said our armor sucks, but it's still armor. Don't go prancing around with a bare head to show to the world, that just screams "please put a bullet in my skull, I want to show off how little I'm storing up there." I know that Space Marines do it, but they're skilled enough to get away with it, and even then, goddamn Cato Sicarius wears a helmet, so there's got to be some benefit to it. At least you won't die a death as humiliating as "desperate rebel threw a bottle." Fucking told him to put it on, but nooooooooo.

248: Don't turn your nose up at a heavy stubber: I know that stubbers and outguns, have a rather well earned reputation of being that thing you get when you can't even get a lasgun, but they're far from useless. Heavy stabbers may be primitive, but they still get out a lot of decent sized bullets at a fast rate. I've used heavy strubbers before, and they're not bolters, but anything that can gun down half a dozen Orks that are charging me with choppas is doing something right. I got better off than the guy next to me, who was just ineffectively blasting away at them with his lasgun. Got two of them before a third put an axe head into his gallbladder. And pancreas. And liver. And lungs. And brain.

249: Know the limits of psykers: Psykers can do really scary, mind bending, turning reality into their toy things. Some of them. Most humans aren't particularly powerful psykers, with the average being somewhere from low to moderate. We've got some high level ones, mainly Space Marine Librarians. Psykers need to know and respect these limits, otherwise shit gets nasty. My daughter was lucky enough to avoid the Black Ships, but even then she had to go through a five year training program, and still had to be officially sanctioned. After that, she knows she can only do so much. She can't, oh just off of the top of my head, try and posses a Chaos Space Marine. Was in orbit when someone on the ground tried to do it, and I could see the explosion from a view port. I later learned that the marine in question was a Thousand Suns Sorcerer, and he had used the connection in reverse to tear open a portal to the Warp. So yeah. Don't hang a sign in the Warp that says, "fresh throats and assholes this way."

250: Vox-casters cannot get outside of a star system: I swear, at times I wonder if more than 1% of the Imperium's population actually know how it's run. A Vox can get from one planet to another planet if it's in the same star system, and that's about as good as it can get. Anything beyond that, you need Astropaths, a particular type of sanctioned psykers that have had a microscopic portion of the Emperor's soul imprinted on them. Yes, we have to piggyback off of the Emperor's soul just so that we can talk to each other, that is how fucked the Imperium is. Most of the populace seems unaware of this, so there was an awkward moment where we had ten million soldiers ready to go to stop Dark Eldar raiding parties that were plaguing nearby sub-sector, but we didn't know which specific system. Here's the problem though, and I think you've already figured out where this is going, the idiot in charge of the local garrisons was trying to call us on vox. It took the better part of the month for this to get sorted out, and the Dark Eldar had gotten bored and moved on. For some damn reason they hadn't taken him to Commorragh to wrap his dick in barbed wire, which would've been justice, but at least the Inquisition shot him at a sun. It's something.

251: Have a mark that your friends and family know: I've got 23rd EDR tattooed on my right hand. My wife has the symbol of the Iron Hands painted on her bicep. My sister has the Aquila carved onto her back, half of it is a scar and the other half is a tattoo that was used to make something out of the scar. Zamora has a birth mark in the shape of her family crest (A hellgun crossed with a power sword, both over a skull) on her palm, a result of her family playing with genetics. My daughter-in-law has old gang markings on her forehead, the most noticeable being a skull with a bullet in one eye. My daughter has a sword tip in her leg, one that you can just barely feel if you know where to look, that couldn't be safely removed in surgery. It's important to know all this, because you may have to dig through a pile of bodies to see if anyone you know is there. It sucks, but you need to do it. And if you get it wrong, you may wake up a year later to find an angry spouse standing over you with a knife. Because you told the colonel that they were dead, when in reality they were wounded, you just saw a corpse that looked like them. Oh, and you caused them to be abandoned on a barren planet for a year.

252: Know when you use certain types of grenades: My daughter fills the role of grenadier in her unit, and that means she has to have the right grenade in her launcher at the right time. Even if it's something as simple as chasing between frag and krak, it will most likely end up being the difference between life and death. The last thing you need to do is shoot an ineffective frag grenade against an armored Ork. Or, and this actually happened once, one grenadier shot an Emperor forsaken plant grenade at a Warboss. Why are they a fucking thing?

253: Treasure hunting ends badly 99% of the time. Yes, I know I spent time hunting down a ripper pistol, but that wasn't treasure hunting. Treasure hunting is running off after fanciful ancient caches of wealth and technology that are lying in some mysterious location. I was going after a piece of equipment that I knew was real and wasn't half myth. Ninety-five times out of a hundred, you just end up wasting your time and the treasure wasn't actually there. five time out of a hundred, you find it and it wasn't nearly what it was cracked up to be. And of those five times, four of them will involve something inevitably guarding it, whether it be turrets, Eldar (Cunts value their relics so much that they'll kill us to keep it safe, but they still leave it on a dusty rock) or local fauna, that will violently murder you.

254: Don't underestimate Rak'Gol: Luckily there's a 99% chance none of you will ever see a Rak'Gol. This entry is for the unlucky sons of bitches that make up the other 1%. Rak'Gol are the only intelligent xeno species native to the Koronus Expanse, so it's rather fitting that even Orks would call their technology shit. Unfortunately, rather like the Orks, even though their technology looks like a bunch of scrap was shoved together and then banged with a wrench, it's got a brutal effectiveness to it. Axes coated in radiation, bullets that are the product of a regular bullet and a bundle of barbed wire hate fucking each other, and rifles that fire so much at such high speeds that it should melt by all rights. This is without getting into how durable these fuckers are, and that's before they indulge in a cybernetics fetish that would make the Iron Hands blush. Throw the heaviest things you have at them right away. I've seen hundreds of men sent off to board their ships, thinking it would be an easy fight. They never got off the transports, which came back with a fresh coat of red paint lining the interior. Plus a bit of yellow and brown.

255: Blades are not lollipops: I don't know what primary school students you're trying to scary, but no one who doesn't see Genestealers in their own shadows is going to be intimidated by that. So stop trying to slurp your blades. If you're lucky, you'll just slice it open. If you're not, you'll be on your knees, trying to figure out when the entire thing went. Oh, and then one of the idiots I have to work with did it on a blade he had coated with poison. Convulsions so violent that he ended up breaking some of his bones, followed by him choking on his own vomit. Just so he could show off.

256: Torture is a crude and ineffective way of gathering information: There's a reason the Inquisition utilizes threats/light smacks followed by threats/psychological manipulation/psychic probing/drugs over just hurting someone as much as possible. Fear is a good way to get someone talking without thinking, information ripped from a mind can only be faked by the most skilled of psykers, and the Inquisition has had a long time to perfect truth serums. The only time they go all out in just trying to cause as much pain as they can, it's more of a punishment than trying to get information. Less talented soldiers don't realize this though, and they carve up captured soldiers with a knife, asking where the enemy attack is coming from. They kept saying they didn't know, something that would've been confirmed as true had any Inquisition methods been used, but the brilliant interrogators didn't believe them. Eventually the captured rebels said that they were planning a rear assault just to make the pain stop, and the whole army got switched around. Yeah, the attack had meant to be a full frontal one that turned into a rear attack by sheer luck on one end and bottomless stupidity on the other.

257: Know the limits of psykers again: I mentioned this before, we're low on the spectrum when it comes to raw psyker power. There's something I couldn't fit in the last entry because it was a whole other kind of problem. See, psykers have this thing called "push" where they can push themselves beyond their limit at the price of having Warp related fuck ups being more likely. Needless to say, this should not be used likely, and only as a last resort. If an idiot commander keeps pushing his sanctioned psyker to shoot more lightning bolts at Kroot, he really shouldn't be surprised if the poor bastard explodes. And then a frakking Ebon Geist jumps out and decapitates him.

258: Needle weapons are shit: Oh people love to go on about needle weapons. They're so rare and eloquent, absolutely silent, a single shot is fatal due to the poisons that it injects into the body because of eloquent design and eloquent technique and eloquent, eloquentness as defined by a self absorbed prick. Except then reality hits and it turns out those things have absolutely zero stopping power, so anyone with even vaguely competent armor is going to be wondering why that rare and valuable looking gun is so utterly worthless. Then killing the person who might as well be shooting blanks. Hope you didn't have to suck/lick too many people for that thing Mr. "Look at me, I'm a highly trained assassin now."

259: Learn the difference between an overcharge charge pack and a hot-shot charge pack: See, there's a very big difference between the two. An overcharge pack gives your las rounds a bit more punch at the cost of being reduce to twenty shots, while a hot-shot pack is extremely powerful at the price of you getting exactly one. The difference between the two is gunning down a line of charging cultists, and blowing the first one to bits before you click your trigger and have a recreation of your eternally placid cock/dry pussy before getting hacked to pieces.

260: Respect your leaders if they have earned it: I know…I know, this might sound rather hypocritical. I haven't exactly had the nicest things to say about the leadership of the Imperium. That's because I'm calling out the shit ones KUBRIK FUCKING CHENKOV! Yeah, I know your trigger happy ass will get a copy of this book one day. Tactics Tactica Imperialis, read it for once in your Emperor forsaken life. Sorry, lost my train of thought. Here's the thing though, when a leader actually proves themselves worthy of respect, you need to show it to them. Take, for example, the colonel and the CO of the 23rd EDR

She was raised on a rich hive world that happened to be in the path of that Chaos Lord. Way down the line, but still in the path. Because the people running it actually had a survival instinct, they raised around ten million troops to assist in the counter attack and to keep the mess from snowballing into a Black Crusade. The colonel, freshly promoted after proving herself in fighting off a couple of minor Ork warbands, was given command of a ten-thousand men, then sent into the thickest part of the fighting. Only 2139 of her men were still alive twelve months later.

Now I know what you're thinking, I thought you were talking about a leader worthy of respect, this one could only keep 20% of her men alive. See, here's the thing, 99% of all Imperial forces deployed to that planet died, on account of a continent sized portal into the Warp being ripped open from the planet's populace being sacrificed in a blood ritual. Even the Space Wolves that had been on the planet barely had any survivors. Compared to the rest of the bloodbath that was that mess, her men had an outstandingly high survival rate. Because she got them out of there.

She took a force of around a hundred volunteers and personally led them in a rear guard after everything had gone to shit. Against a horde of angry Daemons. The only survivors were her and two others who dragged her back to the transport, even though she wanted to stay and cover them, even though she was fraked up beyond belief. Was in intensive care for six months while the survivors from that planet were cycled off the front line and a Cyclonic Torpedo was shot at that planet.

After extensive reconstructive surgery, including most of her face having to be replaced by a metal mask that covered everything except her eyes and mouth (family heirloom) she wanted to give her men more time to rest, considering half of them had been wounded and the other half were in a bad state mentally. But the Imperium, in their infinite wisdom, decided to have them form the core of the 23rd EDR.

Despite all of that, she managed to make the 23rd EDF an effective unit through hard work, drilling and a shit ton of luck, plus the help of it actually getting competent soldiers. Not enough to prevent stupid incidents, but I suppose we can't ask for too many miracles.

Anyway I got off topic. During the clean up campaign that took place a year or two after the failed Black Crusade, we were going from planet to planet, taking out holdouts of Chaos forces. Supposed to be moderately difficult, but we managed to pull it off without too much trouble due to using, shock of all shock, tactics. Not just mindlessly sending in soldiers, Mr. Chenkov.

But we get some idiot who wants to play hero. A Lieutenant who had gotten her platoon folded into the 23rd EDR after the rest of her regiment had been wiped out fighting off the attempted Black Crusade, and she wanted to be a hero. She thought SHE should be leading the 23rd EDR, not a woman in costume who lost most of her soldiers. Took her men, ran off, spent seven days hiking in the wilderness, and literally walked into a Baneblade. At least I think it was literally, the bloodstains would be hard to get that way if she hadn't. Meanwhile, the colonel used a combination of spotters, Earthshakers, and strategic ambushes to flush Chaos out of their hiding holes and into kill zones. Because that keeps people alive. The right people anyway. She's earned my respect.

XXXXX

Author's Notes: I'm starting to dip into Fantasy Flight Games' 40k RPG books for material to work with. Currently on Rogue Trader (Bit ironic, as I always considered this story's narrator and his friends to be Only War characters, and the Chaos Lord that I've brought up before a very successful Black Crusade character.) and I'll see if I can work anything in from the other books. There's already been some references from the books and their expansions (plant grenades) but now I'm really digging into them and not just going off of memory.

For the daughter, again going by Fantasy Flight rules, I decided that she would have mainly telepathic powers, with a little bit of telekinesis. I thought a good balance for her would be that she would have medium level powers, without the uber high level ones available in that game. For the record, high end telepathic powers in Rogue Trader include the ability to completely rewrite someone's personality, and to astrally project yourself into someone else's body to take over them. In one game I played, someone was able to pull this off against a freaking Chaos Space Marine. In fact, I wrote this note before I wrote the rest of the chapter and now I'm going to turn this into 249, except with a bit more reality injected into it.

Heh, it's kind of funny. I wrote the first chapter of Stupid Deaths as a kind of homage to "Things XCOM Operatives Are No Longer Allowed to Do" and it kind of evolved into its own thing.

I would like to thank my Patrons SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, Ryan Van Schaack, and RaptorusMaximus for their amazing support.


	14. Chapter 14

261\. Enough with the narcissism: You're not special. Ok? Get that through your thick skull. I swear, some people think so highly of themselves that I half expect to walk in on them masturbating to a picture of themselves. Don't be Fulgrim. You're not going to be the one that turns the tide of the war, get over it. You can sometimes perform vital actions in minor battles that could in turn help someone who is actually in a position to turn the tide of the war, but 99% of the time that's the best you can hope for. Stop acting like you were personally assigned by the Emperor to save the day, because I'm fairly certain he's so sick of that that he intentionally makes them get eaten by Tyranids because they thought they could take on a Hive Tyrant.

262\. Make sure it's actually meat: Meat is the first thing to go out the windows when rations get strained, aside from fresh produce that is. So once we run out of Grox meat and dead soldiers, the Administratum passes off some pretty iffy things as mean. If you're lucky, they just stuffed the sausage full of bread. Sometimes rather moldy bread. If you're unlucky, it's...less pleasant affairs. Some sort of toxic sludge that someone thought was good enough to eat. Half the ship was puking within three days, and fifty men died. And we had real meat the next day.

263\. Don't be a bunch of try hards: The Alpha Legion are fucking hilarious. Their Primarch(s?) was(were?) the last to join the crusade. Guilliman said that they would never be as impressive as the Ultramarines and their gold plated dicks, so they've had an inferiority complex ever since. Said inferiority complex developed into a complexity addiction just so that they can prove that they're the smartest people in the galaxy because of how utterly convoluted their plans are. When that Chaos Lord I keep bringing up was carving her way across Imperial space, she had several smaller fronts that she had commanded by Chaos Space Marine warbands. The brief time I spent on the front commanded by the Alpha Legion was easily the smoothest part of the war (granted that's not saying too much, but they are a massive step down from the rest of the traitor legions.) They spent a year forming stupid complex lines of defense on this one planet, so that we couldn't take it from them. Deep underground complexes, mountain fortresses, layers of ambush, sleeper agents planted in towns, the works. One problem. We had no orders to take their territory. Just make sure that the rest of the planet didn't fall into their hands. So all that hard work? Never came to anything. In fact, if we hadn't gotten it out of a captured enemy commander, we never would've learned any of it. Thousands of foot soldiers died in cave ins when they were digging those tunnels. And the Alpha Legion never got to use their toys. It's the freaking best. Are we sure that they aren't the ones that directly worship Tzeentch? They seem more like his kind of legion than the Thousand Sons.

264\. Looting won't do jack for you: Now please note, I am talking about looting material goods. Weaponry, munitions, food and other military supplies? Loot everything you can carry and then a few more things for me. But gold, chalices, paintings, rings, watches, and things of that nature? Don't bother. If you're lucky, you're just end with a bunch of dead weight that you can't move. That's the thing about looting, most of it is pretty expensive stuff that you can't sell without giving yourself away as a looter. Assuming you can find someone who can both afford and actually wants those solid gold rings. So if you do try and sell if, the local commissar will see a giant sign saying "do the usual." Assuming the corpse you try and pull it off of wasn't actually a corpse.

265\. Take more than what you think you need: You will always, ALWAYS, need more than you think you do. Tell me something, When was the last time you took exactly what you needed, not a smidgen more, and ended up ok? Never. You never used every last shot that you had, you always have some left over. Because you'd make an ass of yourself if you only took the exact number of shots that you needed. And missed just once. Same goes to grenades. Had a couple of troopers who hadn't needed to use their grenades in months, so they didn't bother bringing them. Grenades sure would've made storming those trenches easier. Would've kept those gunners from tearing those idiots to shreds.

266\. Recognize when absolute cunts are right: Don't want to talk about this, but I have to. Met a blueblood. He was an utter prick. Cut from the same cloth as all the other prick bluebloods. But he knew what he was doing. I really wanted to ignore him, but he said that if we walked right onto a highway while all dressed as rich merchants, the bandits we were hunting would come straight to us and more than close enough to kill. I wanted search parties working around the clock, but eventually went with him because I couldn't get enough men. The men who did go on search parties with other commanders died while we all accomplished our mission. Blueblood smugly said that he was an expert at tracking outlaws. I downed three bottles, screamed for an hour, swore for two more, broke something, then wrote this to talk more about how right he was. Cunt.

267\. Don't underestimate (or overestimate) psychological warfare: My daughter knows a very neat little trick. She can use her psyker powers to mess with the cognition of those we are fighting. In a minor brush war against some rebels, she made an enemy platoon think that we were all thirty foot tall monstrosities. Half of them fled, while the other half tried to shoot at our nonexistent thirty foot tall faces. It was a clean sweep from that point on. The obvious part is knowing that that is a tool that can be used, I've seen plenty of costly battles that could've been easy if we had weakened the enemy's resolve before charging them. However, the more important lesson is to recognize when this trick won't work. It'll work on rebels, Chaos footsoldiers Gretchen, and MAYBE some kinds of Eldar. MAYBE! My money would be on Corsairs and not much else. If you're lucky. You'd think it'd work on Tau, but for some reason they don't break as much as you think they would. Something about the Ethereals. Anyway, intimidation tactics don't work on Daemons. Go fucking figure. I know we were getting desperate during the Chaos Lord's campaign, but really? Fucking really?

268\. Flamers don't work on Necrons: It's kind of telling that, of all the enemies of man, my sister hates the Necrons the most for this reason. Cultists burn, Orks burn, Tyranids burn, Eldar burn, Tau burn, even Chaos Space Marines burn if you can make an opening in their armor. But Necrons do not burn (Unless you can pull a Ciaphas Cain, but we rarely have eight million liters of promethium on hand.) Leave flamers behind when fighting them, they don't help. The mission where I lost my foot had a lot of this going on. Local defense force had a thing where all of their soldiers had a fire motif. They were proud to bring their weapons against the metal skeletons. None of them are alive anymore.

269\. Clean and dress your fucking wounds: Zamora practically has to scream this at everyone in the 23rd EDR, seeing as how she acts as the makeshift chief medical officer. Makeshift because we keep getting assigned official ones, but they keep dying. So Zamora has more or less been filling the post. Congrats, you survived the Ork assault, and one of their bullets just nick your arm. You walk around base, showing it off. Then it gets infected, the arm needs to be amputated but you refuse to believe it's actually that bad, so you try and tough it out, and the next thing I know there's a very smelly corpse in the bunk above me. All this because she didn't want to have bandages and disinfectant. And don't get me going on what happens when Nurgle's inbred children are around.

270\. Hygiene is desirable, but sometimes expendable: Look, no one wants to be stuck in a foxhole with someone who smells. But all too often, clean water runs short and we need to ration it. When that happens, none of us are bathing and we're going to have to tough it out. Do not, I repeat, do NOT steal several gallons of water when we're having a shortage in the middle of the desert SO YOU CAN TAKE A FUCKING BATH! The only reason that idiot didn't get lynched within seconds was because I stopped the mob from doing it. They were using utterly shit rope and I wasn't doing this twice.

271\. Only use medical supplies for their intended purpose: It really is astounding how many supplies an army constantly chews through in order to survive (literally if it's food.) We need ammunition, fuel, armor, water, munitions, clean clothes, spare parts, just to name a few. And medical supplies are in an odd spot. They're something we hope we never need, but we also hope we're never caught without. So no stealing them, no selling them, no trading them and for the love of the Emperor, not using them for personal use. I've seen at least seven people who died from overdosing on painkillers. The rest just got robbed and murdered. Turns out that for a drug dealer looking to increase his stash, a soldier who can't admit that she stole supplies is an ideal target.

272\. Recognize which aliens can be negotiated with: Eldar, Tau, Kroot...nope, that's it. Those are the only ones that are capable of any kind of negotiation. Everything else will kill/eat/torture you to its heart's content. So no more flowers for the Orks, ok? They think you're supposed to eat them. And then accidently take off a hand of a very stupid man.

273\. Don't get involved with local politicking: This never ends well. Every planet, outside of its devotion to the Imperium, has its own set of bullshit rules, customs, political structure, culture, and you can't figure it out in a weekend. Whenever we find a long lost colony, the Ecclesiarchy has to send in a team specifically designed to handle crap like this. Working through their special snowflake nonsense so that we can pull them back into the Imperium. If you do it they kill you because you violated their sacred laws, or end up worshiping you as a god. Then kill you because they want to release you from your physical form. Lady didn't seem to realize that she was going to be the main course at the feast honoring her.

274\. Space is three dimensional: Remember the time one of the Chaos Lord's generals went out on her own? Remember how the navy did a good job turning her forces to ash? It's because our ship commanders remembered this, and hers didn't. We had a young commander in charge of the battle group, and here's the plot twist. He was there because of merit and not because his da-da was the lord of a hive that gave the Imperium a lot of money and bodies. He had his ships divided into groups, one would fly just near enough that the enemy would THINK that they could hit it, only to miss when they pulled back. Then another group would hit them from below while they were firing in the opposite direction. While his ships were darting around like that, up and down, side to side, twisting and turning, the Chaos ships moved along a vertical plane, utterly rigid. There's a reason the casualty rate was 1:5 in our favor and that kid is a lord-admiral, while all the Chaos ships are now floating lifelessly in orbit of that planet.

275\. Learn the fucking basic concepts of how Space Marine chapters work: These people are the Emperor's angels of death! I don't know how you can reach adolescence within the Imperium without having every bit of trivia about Space Marines shoved down your throats! Sure, you might not know about the lesser known chapters (are the Rainbow Warriors a thing? I hear a lot of back and forth on that one) but you should know who they are and how they work. So when one chapter says that they'll be sending in their scouts to help, one commander led a suicidal charge, because she thought that she would be getting a thousand scouts. A THOUSAND FUCKING SCOUTS! We were finally pushing back against the Chaos Lord, and this idiot thought that the Space Wolves had a THOUSAND SCOUTS! Emperor on his Throne, I'm glad she's dead now.

276\. Do not play around with artificial intelligence ever: First of all, no. You have no idea what you're doing, you wouldn't have access to the tools to do it properly and it would never end well. But assuming you found a way around all of that, you still shouldn't do it because the Adeptus Mechanicus really, really, REALLY doesn't like the concept. They kill people for trying to figure out how the inner mechanisms on a Leman Russ work! Someone bragging about how they're going to find a STC for Men of Iron is most certainly going to get a mechadendrite clamping down on their head until it bursts. I don't think he even knew if there was a Men of Iron STC in that fucking segmentum! He was just shooting his mouth off!

277\. You cannot solely use your bare hands in combat. We have spent tens of thousands of years perfecting our weaponry. The Tech Priests were nice enough to make all of those lasguns, bolters, hellguns, plasma guns and all the other nice stuff we get to play with (even if they horde the better stuff for themselves.) Use them. I mean, we already talked about this in 137,but apparently some people take it even further. They refuse to use weapons, thinking them crude and uncivilized, and resort only to hand to hand combat. Because apparently bashing someone's head in with your fists or strangling them to death is "civilized." Lady tried to do this on a Tau. Got a hole in her chest before she was even halfway towards him. I'm surprised she got that far.

278\. Marriage is not something to contemplate while an invasion is going on: I did not propose to my wife while we were still fighting those Orks. Zamora did not propose to her husband while the Dark Eldar were still running around pillaging cities. If you really want to pledge everlasting love and loyalty to someone else, can you at least wait until the enemy shells stop pounding our position? Because it's a bit of a mood killer if you propose to someone, only for your legs to instantly get blown off by enemy artillery. Doubly so when the force of the blast lodges the ring in someone else's cybernetic eye. Thanks assholes.

279\. Recognize when you have a terrible commander: Ok, so imagine this. You have a wall you need to defend. You have Basilisks, Whirlwinds, Valkyries, Imperial Knights, heavy bolters, autocannons, lascannons, mines, you even have Space Marines helping out, both with Marines on the ground and Thunderhawks in the sky. You are defending the wall from Orks, who have nothing but infantry and a couple of trucks. Here's a question. HOW!? HOW THE HELL DO YOU FUCK THIS UP!? They had three trucks with explosives in it, and they were able to punch a hole in the wall with it. YOU HAD FUCKING IMPERIAL KNIGHTS! HOW COULD YOU NOT STOP THREE FUCKING TRUCKS!? I've fought battles where we had a tenth as many forces going up against twice as many Orks and we still managed to come out better than you had! That victory should've been FUCKING GIFT WRAPPED FOR YOU! So yeah. Few dozen men died when the wall came down, a couple hundred more when they stormed the breach and caught the men behind it off guard, and then the commander was executed for gross incompetence. Situations like this are proof that Commissars, while I don't like them, are badly needed.

280\. Recognize when people just aren't interested in anything: Sex is something that's a core part of the human race. It's why there are quintillions of us. And when I have too much time on my hands, I step back and realize that means it took quintillions of fucks to get where we are now. Our expansion to the stars isn't quite as romantic when you think about it that way, is it? The majority of us like to rub our naughty bits against those of the opposite sex. Some of us like to rub our naughty bits against those of the same sex. Some of us like both. That being said, you people need to remember that there are some who just want their naughty bits to be used for pissing and that's about it. My sister is one of them.

This isn't because she's a Sorita (although remember that some people like her are and we've already covered that. Apparently some of them don't take vows of chastity but if I were you I wouldn't play Valhallan Roulette by taking a chance.) She genuinely doesn't feel any sexual attraction to anything. She never did, even when we were kids. While I was going through that lovely phase where I thought tits were the best thing in the galaxy, she was just looking at me like I was crazy. Ok, the hormones being pumped in my head were making me a little crazy for anything that had the slightest bumps on their chest, but we're getting off topic.

Our dad, lovely piece of shit that he was, actually got really mad about this. For some Emperor forsaken reason. Our mom actually stopped drinking herself into a coma long enough to get on her ass for this one too. They thought that she was faking it...for attention or something. I don't know, they weren't making any sense, the reason that they were mad changed from drunken rant to drunken rant. Not that they ever made sense, it was always just shrieking, cussing and the occasional thrown object with the two of them, usually at each other and the two of us whenever we were unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire. Both our parents thought that she was a harlot who was just trying to make herself be more desirable by playing hard to get. Even though she was getting plenty of requests from all the "desirable" boys, and she was still turning them down. Apparently they thought she was holding out for a dowery. When they didn't think that she was secretly hiding perverted desires of some kind. And that was when they didn't think that she was sleeping with every boy on the block. I don't know, they made no fucking sense.

I told her that I didn't blame her for not liking boys. This was because I was just a kid and thought being sexually attracted to men was disgusting. I was a little shit, but it was what she needed to hear. I said it for utterly the wrong reasons, but it still helped her. Go me? Anyway, after our mom got utterly plastered on the job and got her stupid ass killed in a factory accident (head stuck between two cogs) dad really started to come down hard on my sister. To his barely functional brain, this was somehow his fault. He really liked to go after her more than me. Guess he thought she was an easier target. That Molotov Cocktail proved him wrong on that front.

I honestly think that my sister joined the Order of the Bloody Rose just so that people would stop getting on her ass. Men flirt with her and she shoots them down, which causes a few women to think they have an opening, and they all act like she's faking it. Even now that she's a Sister of Battle, some people still keep hitting on her. Those who keep pushing it have had it end very messily for them. Though now she's got a solid group around her to tell her that it's perfectly naturally to not be interested. Always gets a smile on her face. Then she and I remember our dad writing on the floor with his face on fire and share a good laugh. Oh what? We've got dark senses of humor.

XXXXX

Author's Note: 275-279 shows the return of EP's story trapped. He honest to god talked about a chapter that had 2,000 scouts. Ignoring that that's twice of what a chapter is allowed by itself (granted chapters sometimes go above their limit but it's supposed to be something they keep in the dark or have legal loopholes around. The Black Templars come to mind) but that's an absolute crap set up. That means they have a massive influx of raw recruits, probably more than their scout sergeants can deal with, and they'll most likely suffer massive fatality rates. Because scouts are kinda lousy (compared to proper Space Marines at least). And they split off on their own to cover this up? So, the scouts are completely on their own? WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS!? I mean, the point was that they were being found out, but if a chapter was going to spit on the Codex like that, I'd like to think that their rule breaking would be more productive than just having ten times as many noobs as they're normally allowed. This is without getting into how this chapter was descended from the Blood Angels and are perfectly ok with openly talking about the Red Thirst to someone outside the chapter(not that the story calls it that, it calls it the Red Rage. So in hindsight, I have no idea if EP meant to say Red Thirst or Black Rage.)

His MC then talked about how he wanted someone to send him a Man of Iron to study. With a Tech Priest in the same room as him. And somehow the Tech Priest's first response wasn't to scream heretic and then cut his head off. The Tech Priests (Unless they're extreme radicals) hate abominable artificial intelligence. And EP thinks that one would be on board with someone, someone who isn't a Tech Priest, studying the very thing that started that belief that all artificial intelligences should die.

Then there was just this lady (who was harem member #8 I think) who was a martial arts expert who hated all firearms. In the 41st millenium. Yeah...judo chop an Ork, see how that goes. And they're talking about how she needs to marry the main character, because remember how that character got nobility thrown on him for not doing anything special? Now fuck toy #8 needs to marry him, and they talk about this while there's an Ork invasion on one end and a rebellion on the other. Because she was the eldest daughter of a noble family, and for some reason they had left this lack of a husband go up until that point. WHEN ORKS WERE INVADING!

Oh, and speaking of that Ork invasion, yeah. The MC was defending a wall from an Ork charge, he had freaking Imperial Knights, artillery, Space Marines and air strikes, and yet he was somehow incapable of stopping three trucks (the only vehicles the Orks seemed to have) from blasting a hole in the wall. A KNIGHT WARDEN fired on the trucks, and somehow didn't instantly turn it into a pile of scrap and gore! WHAT! THE! HELL!? I think that was the story's attempt at tension. Also, he ordered his men to fire at the trees the Orks were coming out of at one point. Instead of ordering them to fire at, you know, the Orks. I would've put that in, but I ran out of entries for this chapter, and I wasn't going to let it take over the last entry, which has become the place where more significant character development goes. So...much...DUMB! But on the flip side, I was having trouble finishing this chapter, and reading that REALLY helped me out.

I would like to thank my Patrons SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, Ryan Van Schaack, and RaptorusMaximus for their amazing support.


	15. Chapter 15

281\. You cannot become the pupil of a high ranking general: Usually it's Creed (Oh God Emperor PLEASE let him be alive) but everyone talks about how they're so good that they can be the student of some high ranking general. It's infuriating really. "Oh, I figured out how to outmaneuver the fucking Orks exactly once and never again, I should be treated like royalty." Except all these generals have, you know, actual important stuff to be doing. So when you march up to them and demand lessons starting Monday, don't be surprised if you get riddled with las bolts. It was the sixth person that day.

282\. Do not try to woo anyone in the Death Korps: First of all, there's a fifty percent chance that there's no one in there of the gender you're attracted to (word through the grapevine seems to be that the Korps are all male so if you're attracted to women, you're shit out of luck. But even if you're attracted to men, just don't bother.). Secondly they live to die and they view romance as getting in the way of that. So if you can't take a hint and keep pressing on, they react badly and let's just say bayonets get involved, ok? Don't try to screw the gas mask wearing, self hating fanatics. Weirdo.

283\. Never say that anything is for "Kay-Ohss.":...Look...someone made a joke about that, I blacked out, woke up twelve hours later in a room that had blood on every surface and I the next hour of my life was a frantic sprint as I had to scrub every last surface in half a kilometer, along with hiding all the various bits and pieces of body. I'm not the only one. I swear, I've walked in on similar scenes where someone else was covered in liquidized human and the last thing that they heard was that stupid fucking joke. It inspired homicidal rage in all who hear it. I have no idea how or why, it just does. Just don't.

284\. Explain things: There is a lot of shit that goes on in this galaxy. Very few people are aware of all of it, thanks in part to the Inquisition actively (and inconsistently) trying to suppress knowledge of our enemies. So it's good to know if the people you're working with actually know the ins and outs of what we're fighting. If you're working with a PDF to hunt down a Genestealer cult and you spot that one of them has been infected? Shooting them in the head is perfectly fine. Just, you know, make sure the people around you know what you're doing. Because if an off worlder randomly shot one of my friends in the head because of some thing I just learned about today and didn't have it explained to me, I'd be pretty pissed. And so were the soldiers in that PDF. Couple hundred solid rounds to the torso got fired before someone managed to explain exactly what a Genestealer is. We should've lead with that.

285\. Recognize when rescue missions are futile: I know we like to hold onto some form of nobility in these dark times but we need to recognize when something is beyond our ability. Someone has been captured by Dark Eldar? Odds are very unlikely that we won't be able to break into Commorragh. Same for any major enemy that gets our people on the wrong side of a major stronghold. So please. Don't. We've lost enough people. Don't besmirch their tragic fates with your stupid ones. Trying to break into a Ork fortress with just a crack commando team just leads to a Warboss trying to figure out how he can use human skulls as a bumper.

286: We cannot slap a text to speech device on the Golden Throne: First of all, shut up. Second of all, interfering with the Golden Throne is probably up there with abominable intelligence in terms of tech ultra heresy. Thirdly, NO! Fourthly, if the Tech Priests could do this, don't you think that they would have done this by no? Fifth. NO! NO! NO! NO! Sixthly, if the Emperor could speak to us, he'd probably wouldn't because he's too busy doing a hundred other important things. Keeping the Astronomicon powered on top of everything else. I've just heard stories of people who try and tamper with the Golden Throne, and needless to say, they and their entire families are dead or worse. The Custodians don't mess around, clothes or no clothes.

287: Aliens diseases are a thing and they're terrible: When we think of disease and pestilence, we mainly think of Nurgle and his gang of pedophiles. This isn't a bad thing, but we need to recognize that there are diseases that come from alien worlds (or hell, even worlds that you're just not used to) and they are nasty. I really don't want to remember the time me and a thousand other men drank local water and 17% of us didn't survive the experience. We requisitioned extra water rations, but the Administratum said nooooooooooooo. Just drink the local water, you'll be fine. Cunts.

288\. You actually have to hold worlds that you've taken: Ownership is a little iffy at the best of times, considering how convoluted our legal system is. But usually what it comes down to is someone saying "This is mine" and knocking the teeth out of anyone who disagrees. That's more or less what warfare over control of planets is. Seeing who can knock teeth out harder and better. The thing is, after you've one a planet, you need to keep people on it to continue knocking teeth out of people who think they can take it and this metaphor is getting tortured. Long story short, we spent a year conquering a fortress world and then had to conquer it a second time because the dipshit commander didn't want to leave a garrison behind. Yeah, he was orbitally inserted into the thickest front on the second conquest. Without a drop pod.

289: Don't take prisoners when you can just kill someone: When you're slapping the shackles on someone, ask yourself. Do you really need them alive? Do they have vital information? Do they have rare and unique talents you can exploit? If not, why are you bothering? Put a bolt round in their head and call it a day. Trust me, you do not want to know what a Kroot prison riot looks like. Mainly because the Penal Colony governor who wanted to make an example of them learned a hard lesson. The Kroot word for "riot" also means "feast." Yeah. I lost my appetite for awhile after that.

290\. Learn Low Gothic for frak's sake: Zamora is reprinting this entire book in High Gothic just so I can get this point across. Learn how to speak the language that 90% of the Imperium uses for basic communications. You can still keep High Gothic, it is a holy language after all, but I don't think the Emperor intended for his holy language to be used for quick, frantic vox orders. When I'm receiving orders under fire, I need to understand what I'm hearing. And the person I'm talking to needs to understand what I mean when I say "for the fifth fucking time, I don't speak High Gothic!" and not just repeat his instructions more loudly and angrily. Doubly so when the orders were to protect his command center from a Tau flanking maneuver. A very successful one.

291\. You do not steal military hardware from the Imperium: There are a lot of commanders out there that will kill you for trivial reasons. Stealing vital warmaking tools is not a trivial reason though. From the mundane acts of trying to lift a crate or two of lasguns, to the much more braindead attempted theft of a Leman Russ. See, tankers care about those things, so if you get caught trying to see them, expect to be part of a non-sexual wrench gangbang. Assuming commanders don't get to you first. Turns out they really don't like having their theatres sabotaged by greedy and selfish assholes. And Baneblades? Forget it. A single comment on where the keys are kept is enough to get a jumpy tanker to shoot your dick/tits off. Dumbest thief ring I've ever seen. Five people, same day, same tanker.

292\. Don't rely on the Praetorian Guard to save the day: Seriously, these guys utilize tactics that haven't exactly aged well. It's all fine and dandy to use line and volley tactics when you're a primitive civilization that only has las-locks to deal with, but once you get proper lasguns, those same techniques become rather boneheaded. You're out in the open, vulnerable to enemy fire, being attacked by people that aren't going to be stupid enough to stand still in a big group like you are. Saw them trying to fight Orks this way and one had enough brains to lob a couple of grenades (if you can call Squiggs with dynamite shoved in their mouths grenades) and it killed half of them. Then one of them, trying to find out where his legs went, said that the Orks were "cheating."

293\. Clockworks do not make for good cybernetics: People do some weird shit on the fringe of civilized space. And I'm not just talking about piercings and braiding pubic hair (seriously I've seen that, no you may not ask how.). I'm talking about weird and disturbing body alterations. This one planet has bizarre clockwork implants that just jut out of people. They walked around stiff and lifeless, and when they died they were like broken toys. They're like weirder, more primitive and more stupid Tech Priests. Because it turns out those exposed gears are dangerous. I spent a week on that planet and twice a day someone got a body part stuck in someone else's gears. To this day I don't know if those things were a religious statement or just a tacky fashion trend.

294\. Not every time is singalong time: Look, I understand how faith in the Emperor helps people get through day to day life in this messed up galaxy, and that hymns are an important part of that faith. But for FUCK'S SAKE there's a time and place! And that time and place is not when I'm trying to make my voice heard over screaming and gunfire, it's not when Orks are smashing into our front lines, and it's certainly not when the Orks are bearing down on you and your Barbershop Quartet and you should be FUCKING SHOOTING THEM! You know what the worst part is? The Orks were singing as they ripped the idiots apart, and they were actually carrying a tune better. And they were just singing "we'z da best, yes wii iz," over and over again.

295\. No you cannot have fancy weapons: You get a lasgun. Either learn to work with it, get a promotion so that you get a hellgun, or scavenge something. Stop wasting the Administratum's time demanding plasma weapons, power armor, and all the other stuff you'll never get unless you fuck a blue blood. So knock it off before they get fed up and start sending you hardened Grox waste instead of power cells for your lasgun. And no, you cannot throw it at the enemy. I saw one lady try. It did not work.

296\. Don't go jamming needles in your neck: It's bad enough that people keep sticking all kinds of Emperor forsaken drugs into their body, but now some people can't even do it right. I'm stuck in a trench with a nimrod who wants to take on the rebels man to man, do she takes a dose of frenzon. Ignoring all the problems with that drug, she didn't know where the vein in her neck was, nor how to reach it. The result was that she stabbed herself in the neck so hard that death was instantaneous. Makes me wonder how the frenzon could've possibly made her more violent or more stupid.

297\. Stay away from mountain sized lifeforms giving birth: There are insane things that live out there, bizarre, alien and very dangerous wildlife. One planet had actually repulsed Orks because the apex predator was the size of a mountain range and just as heavily armored. (Ok, apparently it was an omnivore because there's no way for something that big to be a carnivore, but this isn't a science lesson). Anyway, we were checking to make sure there weren't any Ork holdouts and giving these things a wide birth. They're docile unless provoked (I guess we're too small to bother hunting down unless we piss them off) except for one. It was convulsing and a platoon thought that it was sick and that they could kill it with satchel charges in an opening. What happened next reduced me to alternating between drinking and crying into my wife's arms for the next two weeks. Death by placenta.

298\. No you cannot "handle things on your own.": Pass things up the chain of command. Even if it's an incompetent chain of command, pass things up so that they're heard. Command needs to know about things so that they can be dealt with. Or at least so that we can get more lasguns pointed at the problem. Don't launch commando raids on the hidden Eldar camp you just found to prove what heroes you are. You'll lose and they'll carry out their plans to make a local volcano erupt. So that the Farseer's girlfriend wouldn't die. Feel like heroes yet you twats?

299\. Don't get too cuddly with the Tau: Yes they're like one of the only species that will make a deal with us and not instantly stab us in the back. They're still out for themselves first. They still want to assimilate us if possible and will go to war with us if they can't. We're not friends just because we fought together once or twice. One married couple thought that we were permanent allies with the Tau after a few repelled Tyranid attacks. They promptly got a few gut shots when the Tau tried to expand into our territory again. Offering hugs did not help

300\. Recognize how many damn fronts there are in this galaxy: We are trying to fight pretty much everything and everyone. I don't know if people can really wrap their thick heads around this, but the galaxy is big, two million planets is a lot, and we're trying to stake our claim to all of it. Check out the history books and you'll see plenty of times we lost worlds or wars because soldiers were pulled out of pre-existing fronts to fight wars that were considered more important.

What's the death here? What's my personal experience with this? Oh, no death this time. See, the Imperium is under new management now. Or at the very least, there's a new guy steering the old management away from their more stupid decisions. Roboute Guilliman has been ordering a lot of forces recalled to Terra, but he's also been rearranging positions a lot in a way that actually makes sense. Worlds that have a less than zero chance or being attacked, or had a surplus of soldiers, are being sent out to reinforce battered lines. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of soldiers have been deployed to the front I'm on, which is a damn good thing...we need them.

A couple of nearby planets have gone dark. Warp storms have been even more insane lately, but they aren't what caused this. Those were heavily defended Fortress Worlds, there's no way that they would've just dropped off the map by that. The announcement about what's really going on happened yesterday, but I suspected before that. Nothing having to do with me being a magnificent detective or anything, I've just...been getting a very familiar and horrible feeling. A feeling of overwhelming dread that seeps into my very bones. And I was right. She's coming back.

To celebrate the Fall of Cadia, the Chaos Lord that nearly started a Black Crusade is giving it another go. Two more worlds have fallen to her and apparently she's not that far away from where I'm stationed. No idea how long that'll take her, no idea if she'll want to consolidate her gains or wait for backup or if she's trying to lure the Space Wolves into joining the fight so that she can get even with the Old Wolf. There have been scattered reports of the Thousand Sons supporting her to a limited degree. At the very least, she has a company with her. None of the big names, but a lot of Magnus' men nonetheless. In addition to the other random minor warbands she managed to get to march with her.

The worst years of my life are about to get a repeat. The galaxy really is going to shit, even more than it already was. I'm not going to lie to you, I don't know how this is going to end. We've been fighting for ten-thousand years and things don't seem to be getting better. If anything they've been getting worse. The return of Guilliman was the only piece of good news we've gotten in a long time. But no matter what happens, keep fighting. If we're doomed to lose, make these bastards pay dearly for their victory. Make their triumph a hollow one. And pray. Pray that Guilliman can pull us back from the brink. Pray that the Emperor has a plan.

I have to go now. The feeling is worse than ever. Command says that we have no idea where the Lord is going to strike, but it's going to be here. I can feel it. It's like there's something alive and vicious inside my bones, wriggling and trying to go out. This planet I'm stationed on is where she was turned back. Where she lost her arm to the Old Wolf. Where she tasted defeat. I have to put my affairs in order. Every time I go to sleep I night I know something for a fact. She's coming.

XXXXX

Author's Note: A fair few of the entries here were inspired by another poorly written fic I've read, but since, unlike EP, the author of that fic actually takes criticism, I'll be leaving him and his work unnamed.

Also when talking about the Praetorian Guard I wanted to pull the "they use bolt action flashlights" meme, but when I looked around I couldn't find anything on that actually being a real thing. And the clockwork cybernetics aren't a reference to anything, it's just a morbid idea I had. The giant lifeform one was the result of me and my friend discussing Titanic Lifeforms in Stellaris (In Stellaris you can find planets with mountain sized lifeforms...and you can recruit them into your army.) and me being curious about how their population would be. My friend then said that one giving birth would be a great Stupid Death idea. He was right.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, Ryan Van Schaack, RaptorusMaximus , and Davis Swinney for their amazing support


	16. Chapter 16

301\. Don't try and earn a place in this book: You think this is something to be proud of? It isn't. Lets count the reasons why. #1, you're dead. Last time I checked, hardly something to brag about. Even if you die doing something impressive, it would've been more impressive if you had somehow managed to come out alive. Not to disrespect those who die heroically, but them dying tends to be a by-product that most rational people (IE not the people I talk about) try to avoid if possible. #2, you died a STUPID death. I mean, you did read the title right? You didn't just start flicking through to try and find pretty pictures right? #3, fuck you, stop trying to make life harder for everyone else. I'm not listing any examples here (no matter how much butter they used) because I refuse to encourage this behavior, we don't need more attention seekers who want me to talk about how cleverly idiotic they are.

302\. A mission is not a big game hunting expedition: I've already talked about taking trophies from enemy and how people can be stupid about it, but trophies from game hunting are more understandable. What ISN'T understandable is doing it when we're on duty. If I'm taking you out for foraging, that means we're just shooting a couple of the big, slow herd grazers for food. We are not making the mating call of the local predators to lure them out into the open so you can stuff one of their frakking heads. Idiot boy and girl duo try to do this, get both of their throats torn out by some abomination of nature with two heads (Chaos corruption may have played a factor) I barely manage to shoot it while its feeding, and I go back to camp with an empty stomach. They always have to find a way to make the living suffer, even after their deaths.

303\. Don't fucking touch anything: Are you in an ancient alien ruin, or an uncharted planet, or maybe just a sinister lab? DO NOT! TOUCH! A SINGLE FUCKING! THING! I mean wanting to do this has varying degrees of reasonable. For example, if we're in a heavy firefight, low on ammo, and there's a massive and ancient weapon mounted on the wall, I can understand trying to turn it on the enemy. It's still going to blow up and take both of your arms off, but I can at least follow the train of logic that led you to this decision. Less so when we're in the depth of an Ork fortress and we find a pit of green goop. Some dipshit took a look at the bubbling, green sludge and said, "Yeah! I wanna stick my hand in that!" Entire body dissolved in three seconds, and five seconds after that we get a pissed off Ork attacking us for messing with his "speshul gunk." I do not want to fucking know.

304\. The enemy don't get last words: When we were cleaning out the holdouts left over from the Chaos Lord's first campaign (having to type first fills me with existential dread) this happened a few times. I was sent into the HQ of a holdout after it had been bombarded for an hour by tanks. Local commander was missing both legs and was the only one left alive. He said he wanted some last words. He got a las round to the face. He had been reaching for a bolt pistol, so fuck him. At a nearby outpost though, some poor sentimental bastard let a cultist give a speech while he was priming a melta charge. Seventeen dead men. So that went well. And you just know the fucker was only screaming "Blood for the Blood God," over and over again.

305\. The point of hospitals are to make people better. General rule of thumb. When someone goes into a field hospital, they should not be coming out in worse condition. We get some pretty good doctors out here on the front, but you can always tell when things are getting stretched thin when the quacks show up. One man goes into the tent with a las round hole in his leg, no major arteries and it missed the bone. Bandages, painkillers and bed rest would've been enough for him, I've seen that injury hundreds of times. The quack amputated the leg. Poorly. Kid died from blood loss. Then he tried to examine me. He later was turned over to Comissars with half his teeth missing. On a totally unrelated note, entrenching tools make good makeshift clubs.

306\. Duck and fucking cover: When shells start coming down, you get into a bunker, or into any natural formations that make good cover. Upper floors in a building are the first place to be hit when the bombardment starts, and out in the open is a killing field, So kindly refrain from running around like a grox with its dick cut off. We were riding out the bombardment in a decent bunker, but this trio thought they'd sneak out and loot the local jewelry store while everyone was distracted. They were two thirds of the way there when a shell hit right between the middle of them. It was like the cultist manning the cannon was deadeyeing it. One was reduced to chunks, biggest piece was the size of a fist. One cartwheeled away and was impaled on the store's Aquila. And the third had his rib-cage inverted, minus the few that flew out and were half buried in a concrete wall. He half crawled towards the store before he bled out, and I honestly think he was still trying to rob the place before shell #2 hit him. Then shell #3. And #4. And #5. Then I kinda lost count. A betting pool got going behind me, and all I know is that it was about how much longer that was going to keep going.

307\. Non-Space Marine power armor has limited power supply: I'm not sure if I should bother with this, considering how unlikely it is that anyone reading will get a chance to try out powered armor. But who knows, a Rogue Trader may pick this up. If that happens, power armor designed for regular humans has a time limit of a few hours at most. If you're putting that thing on, you either need to be heading directly into a battlefield or be in a position where you'll be fighting within an hour. No running around during a parade showing how stupidly rich you are before heading off to fight local rebels. Because if you get halfway through the enemy holdout and then run out of power, you're going to have a few thousand rounds from very pissed off rebels all converging on you. I'm not exaggerating, a hundred surviving rebels were all firing on him because he had stopped in the middle of their kill-zone. The armor was good, but the damage all those shots did added up, and slowly contributed to a drawn out and very painful death. But hey, it was a blue blood, so fuck him.

308\. Do not use cybernetic apes:..Fuck you. I don't care if they're technically aliens, they're apes. Their weapons are nice, grab them if you can, but seriously? Fucking seriously? Some radical Inquisitors work with these things, Jokaero they're called apparently, but please list five ways in which working with an ape alien can end well. Because, last time I checked, the Imperium wants to wipe out all alien life and I think that gives them good reason to want to kill us. They're not like the Eldar or Tau were they can have a temporary ceasefire when a greater threat approaches, THEY'RE FUCKING APES! Am I being racist? Probably. But why the fuck are you accusing me of being racist, you're a thousand times more likely to take the "suffer not the alien, the mutant, the heretic," line more seriously than I do, so don't get on my ass for this. You haven't seen one of these things go beserk and rip off the arm of three guardsmen while his handler was trying to calm him down. Fuck these things

309\. Learn when it's a good time to screw: People, I'm getting real sick of your shit. When there's rumors of a Dark Eldar Mandrake stalking the town we're garrisoned in, with several mutilated corpses to back up those rumors now is not the time to fuck in the local primary school. Doubly so when the last few corpses were strung up outside it. Because Dark Eldar are sick bastards that will let you get going before it then aims for the genitals. Christ that was a mess. And they were in the Emperor forsaken pool.

310\. Don't bother with primitive weapons: Some backwater worlds are extremely backwater. As in, live in a mud hut, sharpen a stick for a weapon, shit in the lake we drink from backwater. If you ever end up fighting on one of these worlds, don't bother using their weapons. Even if they're (relatively) more advanced and have advanced to muskets. Even if you're out of ammo, you'd be better off going for your knife or just running for it. Have you ever seen twenty Guardsmen charge a Chaos Space Marine with spears? Its depressing. I honestly think even the marine was depressed, he looked really out of it while butchering them. Think about that. They were so utterly moronic that they managed to MAKE A CHAOS SPACE MARINE DEPRESSED!

311\. Space is big: I mean, let's sit down and think about it. You know how massive a planet can be? How it can take ages to scout every last corner of it? A planet is a tiny little speck compared to the star system its in. Think dropping a bread crumb into the ocean and you get a pretty similar size ratio. Now that we've gotten down how big a star system is, chew on this. There are a hundred-billion star systems of that size in this galaxy alone. And there are Emperor knows how many galaxies out there, but there's at least another hundred-billion. Just to give you an idea of scope. So when you say you're going to scout every planet in existence, I'm going to stand and laugh. Doubly so when we find a derelict scouting vessel, half the crew dead from starvation and the other half from scurvy. Oh, and while I'm on the subject.

312 Eat your fucking vegtables: Yet another thing I managed to get down with my daughter when she was five. Ok, quick vocabulary lesson dipshits. Malnourished does not mean starving. You can gorge yourself daily and still be malnourished if you've been eating nothing but garbage. Now look, I get that we don't get fresh produce often because the Administratum forgot we exist, or the entire shipment went bad or whatever fresh breed of stupidity is plaguing us, but eat it when we get it. Don't be a stubborn twit and then start complaining when your gums bleed.

313\. No using flamers for a barbeque: You know, sometimes I wonder if people are trying to piss me off. A dozen flamer tanks go missing, my sister is screaming up a storm, I'm tearing through the camp worried that they're going to be used for sabotage, only to find some idiots having a cook out. If you can count grox streaks being burned to a uniform black crisp cooking. There were three different fires and they all had been drinking. One person spilled his beer while he was tending to the steaks, and the predictable happened. I was standing a good way away, yet still found myself on my back, smelling burning hair and thinking "Oh goodie, I'm going bald for the next few months FUCKING AGAIN!"

314\. Chivalry will get you nowhere: Look, let's address the elephant in the room, ok? Eldar women are good looking. I'm pretty sure I just got onto the shit list of around a thousand different Inquisitors, but they are. If you're attracted to ladies, you'll probably like Eldar women. And you need to get the fuck over that, because as we've already discussed way back when, they are not interested in fucking you. You need to remember that being good looking doesn't mean shit, and this is for those who don't fantasize about screwing them too, in fact it's mainly them. So many times I've seen them lower their weapons, thinking the beautiful woman standing before them was a kind and generous soul. Just before they were decapitated. If they were ugly you wouldn't be doing this, so get your head on straight. Hey, count yourself lucky she didn't cut your other heads off first, I think she was tempted.

315\. Do not throw your weapon: Great you think your cool. You can take a knife or whatever and put it between a cultists' eyes. Unless you put a spin on it and you accidently end up hitting them with the hilt, which happens more than you might think. So there's reason one to not to it, you're not as good at it as you think you are. But the bigger problem is that you just threw away a weapon you idiot. Even if it is a backup weapon, it's still a weapon, and we only have so many of those. So don't waste your knife trying to nail an Ork in the throat. You'll fail and get your neck snapped. And when you see this happen, do not ask me for my knife so that you can try. You'll end up on the ground with a tooth missing, because if you're gonna act like an Ork, so will I.

316\. Don't aim for limbs: Have I gotten across how durable the things we fight are? Because this is a pretty universal rule because of that. Blow a arm off of an Ork, he'll crush you with the bicep of the other one. Take a Necron's leg off, it'll just keep blasting at you. A Tyranid is so durable and determined that you'll have to blow off half of them before it'll fall over, and even then it'll still viciously scramble its way toward you, a mess of blood, teeth and pissed off. So don't bother, ok? Aim for center mass or a head if it presents itself. Don't take off the arm of a Broodlord and expect it to forget it has a mouth that can wrap around your whole body. Because it didn't.

317\. Drinking blood is not an effective way to respond to blood loss: First of all, you're gross. Second of all, that's not how it works. Third, if you're going to do it can you at least make sure it's HUMAN blood? Ork blood isn't even red (most of the times) it's green (when it's not black) so what made you think THAT was a good fucking idea? But no, mix it with rum and moonshine for a cocktail (Not only did this happen, it got a name. The Ork Piledriver. No I am not making this up.) to make it go down easier. There were three ruptured livers that week. I'm surprised there weren't more.

318\. Learn how invisibility works: Eldar Rangers are a fucking nightmare. I was part of a thousand man unit. We lost a hundred men to a single one of them and were pinned down for an entire week. We had to carpet bomb ten square kilometers before we could get moving again, and even then we never found a body. I think we just wounded it and it pulled out. So I get that we want to pull something like that off, and get an invisible sniper. Just one teensie weensie thing. Eldar Rangers take on the color of their environment, they don't turn invisible. Some very radical individuals in the Adeptus Mechanicus tried their hands at making a human invisible. They did, all light was bent around him. And he couldn't see, so he staggered off and got his head stuck in a set of factory gears, popping his head off. This happened five more times before the Tech Priests had to admit it wasn't working.

319\. Remember that Tyranids can adapt: This tends to get glazed over in favor of all the other horrible shit they do, but they're durable fuckers. So you need to be really careful when it comes to these things, because if they adapt in just the right way, they become a nightmare to deal with. Even more of a nightmare than they already are, just to clarify. One six month campaign that I was a part of was a very good example of this. The entire planet was a forrest, never seen anything like it. Tyranids were on it, so a general decided to set the entire thing on fire. For awhile, we thought it worked, because a lot of them did die. And then the survivors moved on. Have you ever fought flame proof Tyranids? They have thick, glossy black armor that's twice as thick as their normal armor. Nice going dipshit, like they weren't bad enough.

320: No cryptic hints: I hate people who think they're poets. We need to do something important, there's this vague threat coming, but no one actually feels like telling us what it is! They say something like "darkness is coming." NO FUCKING SHIT! Darkness has been coming for the last ten-thousand years! It's been coming so hard that the bed sheets are now a solid shade of white! Be a little more specific about what you're talking about! I taught my daughter how to do this when she was six! The number of times this has happened in the Imperium, either via asshole outsiders or pretentious psykers, and the time wasted on trying to figure out what the actually hell they were talking about.

The experience I had...actually wasn't example of this. Let me see, how do I put this lightly-there's a Harlequin in the same room as me. He's sitting cross legged across from me and smiling. Not a smug, holier than thou smile, but a friendly, "how's it going" smile. Ironically that makes me want to punch him in the face even more. But I get ahead of myself.

I was just sitting in my quarters, working on this book, when all of a sudden he pops in out of nowhere. Apparently there's an old Webway tunnel on this planet and this guy snuck in via that way. He's been spending the last few months scouting out the planets that fell to the Chaos Lord. Getting information on how many men she has, what her supply situation looks like, things like that.

He started off by telling me that "that which has happened before will happen again," and "the black tide will wash over us all." And when I was about to shoot him in the face with my hellgun for being an unhelpful prick (in hindsight, attempting to do that probably would've ended badly for me) he laughed and said he was just messing with me. Then he started giving me detailed reports on numbers and movements. I gagged a little when I saw how many Titans she managed to get her hands on.

This guy said that he came to me because apparently he found a couple copies of my book on those planets (popular kindling among cultists it seems) and thought I'd be a safe person to come to with this info, as I could move it up the chain of command. To the colonel, to be specific. Oh I want to punch this smug cunt so much.

But sadly, I really do need to bring this to the colonel. The Chaos Lord is going all in. Most times Chaos actually maintains something resembling a civilian population, as it does need a work force to keep its war machine running. Farmers, factory workers, mechanics, things like that. She's conscripting everyone she has. Even if it's just taking a farmer and shoving a lasgun into his hands (a spear if she's short on lasguns) she's arming everyone. She really wants to take this planet, to get revenge for her defeat. Emperor help me. Emperor help us all. He'll be sticking around if we'll have him (let's see how long he lives) but even if everyone is extremely radical today, I don't know how much of a difference he's going to make. It really is the End Times.

XXXXX

Author's Note: Rogue Trader has power armor rules that say that they don't have a very good power supply. Needless to say, every game I've played of it has gleefully ignored that rule, but it's still good Stupid Deaths material.

Thought the cast was just a tad bit human-centric, so I thought maybe shake things up a bit. This Harlequin character is actually based off of a Rogue Trader character that I didn't get to use as much as I would've liked. A vaguely defined character who steps on the cryptic advice giver by actually being straightforward with the info he's giving the party.

Also I've been meaning to bring up 318 for awhile in regards to science fiction. A common explanation for how invisibility works in fiction is that light is being bended around the invisible thing. And that would indeed render the object invisible, but it begs the question. How do you see? It's one thing if it's a spaceship that's going off of thermal scans and not light based imagery (I think) but on a personal level? It wouldn't really work. It drives me nuts. The only thing I've really seen that works around it is the very well written 40k/Mass Effect story Faith and Wit that had another take on the Eldar Ranger, using psyker powers as sonar, allowing the ranger to be invisible.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, Ryan Van Schaack, RaptorusMaximus, and Davis Swinney for their amazing support


	17. Another Effing Day in the 41st Millenium

Another Effing Day in the 41st Millennium- Prompted Chapter

XXXXX

I'm pretty sure everyone asks the question "Why the fuck didn't I stay in bed today?" at least once in their life. I'm fairly certain the number of times I've asked it is in the low thousands, not counting the times I asked it for a second time in a day. And third. And fourth. And fifth through twentieth.

I mean, today started nice enough today. Woke up in the same bed as my wife. Even though her face is really damn lined, there's nothing topping that smile of hers. We considered having a pre-breakfast quickie. We're both getting old and our sex drives don't quite work the way they used to, but we know how to work around it.

"But no," I muttered under my breath. "Double patrol duty, because the limp dick Lord General thinks that apparently this is how you respond to a fucking Chaos Lord being around the corner. Not like they would have to come in via fucking SPACE or anything. No, she could just sneak her fucking battle-barge in underground, because she found a hidden Web Way portal that even the Eldar didn't use."

I sighed and looked up. I was leading my platoon through one of the blasted wastelands that seemed to make up half of this Emperor-forsaken planet. Though, to be frank, considering how vicious the battle against the Chaos Lord's forces had been, I wouldn't be surprised if it was. It might as well be the planet's name. Wasteland. It had a proper name, but every time I heard it, all I heard was Wasteland.

I don't do it on purpose, it's was just what this damn planet feels like. Every time I step outside one of the cities, it's all I see. The crunch of barren and cracked soil under my boot, the stale taste of dry air, and nothing but rocky crags as fair as the eye can see. And twenty men were patrolling it by foot. This section of it at least, the majority of the 23rd EDR were patrolling the rest of it. "Never know when one of the cracks might be hiding an enemy battalion," I hissed.

"Uh, sarge?" a nervous voice said. I glanced over my shoulder. A girl, and I call her a girl because she doesn't look a day older than sixteen, was nervously walking alongside me. She was holding her lasgun as if was alien and she wasn't quite sure what to do with it. A local no doubt, either conscripted or volunteered as a result of the recent rise in Chaos activity all over the galaxy. "Uh, can I ask you something? What happened to the guy I replaced?"

"Oh boy, that one?" I slung my hellgun over my shoulder and let it dangle there as I reach into one of my pouches. I pulled out both the latest edition of my book and the rough drafts that I planned on working into the latter editions. "Ok let me see," I said, flicking through the pages of Avoiding Stupid Deaths in the 41st Millenium, looking for the incident that had given this girl a job. "That was last week...give me a second." I flicked all the way to the end, number 300, before closing the book.

"Must be in my notes." I uncrumbled the half rolled up notes and scanned them. "Ok here we go. He tried to take a piss on a damaged Servitor on a bet. Caused the Servitor to short circuit and got himself electrocuted." I gave her a wry look. "Don't sweat it too much, you're not exactly filling big shoes. Just don't piss where you're not supposed to and we'll be fine."

"Oh," the girl said, looking a little more relaxed. There was some hope for her if she wasn't running back to the city after hearing about death while urinating. "I thought he was murdered by that butcher that we're looking for." She swallowed. "He hasn't killed any Guardsmen has he?"

"Only one that was drunk and wandering off into the middle of nowhere. He probably would've died of exposure anyway, so it was aiming for the low fruit." Sliding my book and notes back into my pouch, I gripped my hellgun and continued marching, scanning the area. There had indeed been a couple of corpses that had turned up, looking like a butcher's knife had been taken to them, with the marks of Chaos carved into them. Clumsy marks of Chaos and sloppy knife marks, but marks nonetheless. High Command wanted any potential cultists dealt with. I get that part, I just don't get sending thousands of men into bumfuck nowhere to track down one mediocre cultists. Only the scouting platoon were qualified to act as trackers, the rest of them were just wasting time.

"Do you think he was one of...her's sir? You know, the-"

"I know very well who you mean trooper," I said through grit teeth. "And no. She wouldn't lowball it like that. Three bodies that couldn't even get the mark of Khorne right? She'd be embarrassed to begin her comeback like that. No. You know what this is? An idiot is panicking and is trying to build up a resume of heretical acts. That way, when the queen bitch shows up, he can pretend he was always on her side and not end up with his head on a pike. You get a handful of people like that whenever we get word that a big Chaos invasion is coming."

The girl swallowed. "I thought the Imperium's people would have stronger faith in the Emperor than that. To toss him aside so quickly, did they ever truly believe in him?"

I had to fight back a sigh. This girl was too damn young. She shouldn't be out here, waiting inevitably to be a bit of cannon fodder when this planet was finally attacked. Her biggest concern should be figuring out what gender she was attracted to. And yet here she was, due to the wisdom of the High Lords of Terra. Too young to drink, too young to vote in local elections, but old enough to die for them. "Probably not. There's quintillions of us and we're too spread out, too disconnected. It's only natural that shit like this happens."

The girl swallowed. She was going to be dead by this time next year, barring a miracle. The 23rd EDR had a depressingly high fatality rate as it was. Maybe she would be lucky, maybe she would be one of the few who lived long enough to become veterans. "Look," I said, trying to reach back to when I had been a father of someone that age. "Don't think about that. We've held out for this long. We've pushed her back before and we'll do it again. Just think back to basic training and recite a hymn that comforts you. Rinse and repeat until your hands are steady."

She nodded. "As it says in the Imperial Uplifting Primer-"

"Oh for Emperor's sake," I swore before I stop myself. "Ok, new plan." Out came my book. "Read this. Forget everything in the Primer that isn't directly related to weapon maintenance and replace it with this." She looked very confused, but did as she was told. Shouldering her rifle and idly flicking the page open.

"Wait, that's what happened to your nose?" she asked, sounding half shocked, half bewildered. I gave a stiff nod. She gave a nervous laugh before continuing to read.

Well, she'll be able to get through it, this patrol was going to last another five hours. Halfway done. "It's been an hour," I said to my platoon's vox-operator, not looking at him. "Check in with the scout platoon, see if they've got any updates."

"Uh, sir, they reported in a few minutes ago. They think they have a potential suspect and are heading this way," a rather distracted voice said. This was why I didn't turn to look at him. I already knew that I wasn't going to like what I was seeing. He wasn't paying attention to his duties and letting me know what the scouting platoon was doing. That could mean a few things, none of them good.

"What is he doing?" I asked through grit teeth.

"Uh," the girl said, turning around. "He's showing off to his girlfriend by twirling his and her laspistols around his index fingers."

"You know!" I shout, my temper flaring up, "you get paid absolute garbage and yet I still feel like it's too much for someone who's microscopic, stupidity ridden mind managed to think 'yeah, this is a fucking productive use of my time!" There was a loud crack, much like a fairly large stick being snapped. Right after, there was a heavy thud as something slumped to the ground. There was a long pause as I came to a stop, the line of troopers doing the same. "He's dead isn't he."

"Both of them are," the girl said meekly. "He kept pointing them at her and making kissing noises. I think it was a flirting thing. Um. Both shots went through the heads."

"Ok!" I said, throwing my arms up over my head. "Draw straws, the four who draw the shortest stick with the bodies until pick up comes and gets them." Collectively groaning, the platoon gathered in a small circle, one trooper pulling out her litho-sticks to use as straws. "Not you," he said, looking at the girl who had moved to join the rest of the platoon, but came to a sudden halt. "Can you operate a vox?" She nodded cautiously. "Congrats. You're my new vox operator. Call in in our position to the scout platoon and tell them to meet us here."

Spluttering out a quick thanks, she ran off in the direction of the now dead man. I stick a finger into a chest pocket and produce a litho-stick of my own, poking it into my mouth before going for my lighter. After my litho-stick was lit and the straws had been drawn, the platoon was moving on at 75% strength with the girl lugging a vox on her back. Only a few minutes had passed before the sound of engines reached my ears.

Motorcycles came into view. A dozen of them manned by Guardsmen in rather ragtag armor, driving towards them in a spearhead formation. Before, there had been nothing but dry wind and stupid comments to break up the empty silence of the wasteland. After that, the sound of roaring engines were welcome. They were familiar, and most importantly, something I could react to.

The formation swerved as they neared, the lead most bike stopping directly in front of him. The rider was wearing a thick pair of goggles, wires extending out of either side and into solid projectile pistols in leather underarm holsters. The rider slid the goggles off and let them rest around her neck, revealing a hard face. A tattoo of a skull with a bullet in its eye was on her forehead. "Got you a little present." She idly gestured to the back of her bike.

A bloodied corpse was tied to the back, several noticeable bullet holes in its head, to the point where it hardly resembled a head anymore. "Our serial killer I take it. I don't suppose there was any chance that you interrogated him before you reduced him to red mush?"

"Oh don't worry about that, the Mrs. peeled back the layers of his brain like they were a rotten onion," my daughter-in-law said idly. "Just like we all thought, panicking guy acting on his own. Nothing in his brain suggested otherwise. And then he tried to go for his knife and gut her." Her grip tightened on the handles to her bike. "I decided to show him why that was a very bad idea."

I couldn't help but fight back the urge to grin. Leaning forward, I gave her a firm pat on the back, which earned me a small smile from her. "That's an attitude that I like to see. You sure that there weren't any others?"

"Command wants us to interrogate his family. We found him in a holdout in the depths of a canyon about ten kilometers east. His family was with him, but it looked like he had taken them hostage. Still, we had orders to scan them for taint, as well maintaining radio silence about them." She gave the corpse a nudge. "Kind of why I brought his body out here instead of just voxing it in."

No sooner had she spoken, than a loud shout cracked across the barren plains. "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" Instantly, everyone tensed. Both my platoon and the scouts readied their weapons, aiming in the direction of the cry. A single second later, I had relaxed. A lone person was charging towards us from the direction of the city. He was holding an axe in each hand, had blood splattered all over his face (which seemed to be his if the gashes he had were anything to go by) and he overall looked rather intimidating. An effect that was ruined by the fact that he was two kilometers away.

"Sir, do we open fire?" my new vox-operator asked.

"Too far out to hit with a lasgun unless you're an expert marksman," I replied, lowering my hellgun. "Leave that to her." Without further orders, my daughter-in-law promptly slapped her goggles back on, flicked a switch that caused electronic runes to burst to life in the inner lens, and drew one of her pistols.

"Adjusting for wind," she said, more to herself than to me. "Compensating for dropoff. He's running in a nice straight line. That oughta do it." With a pull of the trigger, the bang of her gunshot echoed. I watched, a feeling of satisfaction warming the pit of my stomach, as the head of the cultist exploded like a rotten tomato. "Done and done," she said, ejecting her magazine and sliding a fresh bullet in before reloading. "I'll grab that on my way out. I'll head in the direction he came from and see if he has any buddies we need to smoke out."

I nodded. I glanced at my vox-operator, about to tell her to relay what had just happened, only to see that she didn't need any prompting. "Yes sir, just the one. No sir, he's been dealt with. I'm positive, it was a dead center headshot. The scouting platoon is about to investigate it? What?" The girl swallowed and bit her lip, giving me a nervous look. "I understand." She lowered the speaker. "Scouting platoon is to return to their normal duties. We're to investigate the source of the cultist."

Both my daughter-in-law and I both stared at her. "Seriously," she said, giving her bike a rev as she did. "We've got the motorcycles, my wife has everything under control back there, and they want you guys to take the long trip? I got word about the bodies you left back there too and they said that they don't want us getting them either." I'm not surprised to hear that. The Lord General here is really prickly about people going off their assigned duties. I hope he dies first when we're finally attacked.

I lean closer and whisper in her ear. "Speaking of which, you know how I feel about motorcycles."

She gave an idle wave. "We're using them for recon, not showing off. Cheap sons of bitches didn't want to spring for a couple of Chimeras." I certainly knew how that felt. I had a feeling that the troopers that were watching the body of boyfriend idiot and girlfriend idiot were going to be waiting for a ride for awhile. "Still, we'll pick up the body, no way for you to carry it without holding two more men up. And you kinda look like whatever happened back there gave you another entry." She knew me well.

After checking with them to see that our water was still topped off, they rode off. I, with a feeling of growing impatience, took my men off on a long ass detour. "Not like time is of the fucking essence or anything," I hissed as I ordered my men to double time it, to the answer of many groans. "Not like there could be more cultists doing Emperor knows what. Dumb as bricks most likely, but they could still kill someone we need alive. You'd think that'd call for transport but noooooooo." Time slowly ticked by as we passed the spot where the insides of the cultist's head were splattered all over the ground.

Two incidents in one day. That was never a good sign. Plenty of people would think that it was a sign that the invasion would be right around the corner. It wasn't, but there wasn't any way to convince the local populace of that. They saw some Chaos and they assumed it meant that Abbadon the Despoiler would be arriving in orbit the next day. Chaos terrified people, and I had to admit, with good reason. It could appear anywhere at anytime in the form of anyone. It wasn't all powerful, but it had a good way of making people think that it was.

And so began a long hike in the other direction. We hadn't received any orders that we were to continue our regular patrol but I seriously doubted that they would let us off like that. Everyone was already starting to complain about sore feet. Mine were starting to ache a bit as well, though decades of soldiering made the feeling little more than a minor annoyance to me. The girl beside me kept her mouth shut, but I could spot her wincing. She was trying to tough it out. I made a mental note to tell her that she really didn't need to bother. I would have to tell her when no one else was around, doing it now would just humiliate her for trying to do more than was expected.

There was another bark of orders from across the vox, which the operator quickly responded to. Her face turned pale. "Another solo cultist attack. Not too far from here. She was intercepted by another patrol. They triangulated both attacks and there's a chance they came from the same source. The second patrol is heading there now. It looks like it's a cave, one kilometer from here"

"All right, everyone, triple time!" The platoon broke from a brisk trot into a firm run. Enough to get them across the kilometer that they needed to cross at a good pace, but not so fast that they would be tired when they got there. Normally, I would push them a bit faster, but the more I look at the men I have, the more I realize how young they are. Half of them are barely older than my new vox-operator. Most of the others look like they're only in their twenties. Only three are any older. Two women and a man with graying hair and eyes that tell me just how much they've seen.

"I always get the fucking green idiots. Why's that again?" I hiss. "Oh yeah, that's right, because the colonel trusts me to keep them alive. Makes you wonder how bad the attrition rates are in the other platoons." I had to force myself to slow my pace. The last thing I want to do is get ahead of the others and force them to move faster to keep up. Two or three of them were loudly complaining. "Oh stuff it! I'm sure you think that if you ask the Chaos Gods nicely their servants will let you go at your own speed, but the ones of us who actually have brains know we need to go a bit fucking faster!"

Thankfully we were almost there. A cave opening had just come into view amongst a small outcrop of rocks. Around a dozen bodies were strewn about the entrance. Most of them were PDF soldiers that had profane marks of Chaos painted in blood on their armor. However, here and there were members of the 23rd EDR, their bodies riddled with a mixture of las burns and solid round holes. "Local PDF unit was corrupted," I muttered. There was a faint sound coming from inside the cave, the sound of snapping sticks. Then a sharper sound of autogun fire. "IN!"

Without another word, I bounded into the cave, hellgun at the ready. I crept forward at a firmly controlled pace, slow enough to check the corners, but only just enough. The sounds of both las and auto fire were getting louder as I pushed through, the thumps of my platoon's footfalls behind me.

The cave became darker and darker as I moved further in, with there being something unnatural about the darkness. It felt like the darkness was actively pressing down on me, trying to smother me. I've felt this before, and it was never in a friendly environment. And always with this enemy.

My mind drifted for half a second, and when I came back, bright red lights illuminated the automatic fire of las weapons. Fifty plus cultists were taking cover behind a fairly well entrenched holdout. Lines of crates and sandbags at their front, with a cave wall to their back. Another 23rd EDR platoon was already engaging the enemy taking makeshift cover behind rocks and stalagmites. Fire was viciously being traded, bodies already littering the ground.

"Keep your wits about you!" I shout as my platoon filed into the open cavern, firing their lasguns as their sought cover. "They're not random bumblefucks! They're PDF, they've got equipment and training! Don't underestimate them just because-" before I could finish my sentence one of them attempted to throw a grenade. Attempted because as he threw it, it bounced off of a stalactite, fell back, hit the cultists on the head, and then rolled back into the thick of the enemy forces. The resulting explosion sent a dozen bodies flying, many in several pieces, over the barricade that had been formed.

There was a momentary lull in the fighting as everyone, Imperial and Chaos, gawked at what had just happened. I just gave a groan. "Another fucking entry," I grumbled as I took aim at the stunned cultists and managed to gun down three while they were still distracted. My much more powerful hellgun easily punched through their armor than a lasgun would, making quick work of them before they regain their senses. One was able to recover more quickly than the others and fired a snap shot at me. I didn't get back into cover quickly enough.

Feeling like a Ogyrn slammed me in the chest with a hammer, I went sprawling onto my back. Lights popped in front of my eyes as I felt a pair of thin arms wrap around my torso and pull me back. At the same time, a roar of rage filled the cavern. "SISTERS! FORWARD! FLAMES!" Before I could comprehend where I was in relationship to everything else, the cavern was bathed in a blinding orange light. From within the first platoon, a team of five had charged toward. The attention of the Chaos forces were mainly in my direction since I had been the one to bring them back into reality. It had drawn their focus away from the other side of the cave for a few precious seconds.

The team was at the barricade, massive tongues of flames arching out of their weapons. For a second I thought that they were going to throw themselves over the barricade, but thankfully they weren't that stupid. They instead slid up to the edge and continued to spray flames into the enclosed space. Half of the interior of which had caught fire, without even counting the cultists that were rolling on the ground in pain.

The ones that weren't on fire abandoned their positions. Screaming pledges to their dark gods, they charged out of position, away from those with the flamers, and at my platoon. The ones in the lead swung axes, felling a handful of soldiers. With a feeble grunt, I heaved up my hellgun, spraying wildly. I sawed off the leg of the lead most cultist when I had been aiming for his chest, and managed to nail the second one in the head.

A lasrifle poked out just above my head, and fired with the setting on burst. It hit one cultist in the chest, sending it sprawling to the ground. Still alive, it drew a pistol and aimed it, only for a second burst to slam into its shoulder. It hissed in pain and anger before a third burst to the head finally finished it off. The rest of the platoon were now concentrating their fire on the cultists, easy targets out in the open. Within seconds, they had been reduced to a pile of corpses.

"I think...I think that's the last of them sarge." My head was still reeling from the gutshot. Gingerly, I finger my chestplate, where the bolt hit me. No blood, and only armor in the hole. Thank the Emperor for carapace armor. No longer disoriented, I realized that I was on my back. At a rather awkward angle, thanks to the power pack connected to my hellgun. "Sarge? You ok?" My vox-operator is leaning over me, looking nervous.

"Not bad shooting," I groan, managing to get myself into a sitting position. "First taste of combat?" She nodded gingerly. "Well, you did all right. Next time just aim for the body though. Headshots when you can get them are one thing, but you were struggling to get it just then. Until you can get it down, just aim where they keep all their organs." She nodded, hastily checking the power cell on her lasgun. "Oh, and burst? Good choice. Though when they were out and charging at you, full auto would've worked, but sticking with burst is fine too. You can get complacent with full auto. Now then, I know a few people who would charge a bunker with flamers, but only one of them is on this planet. The rest aren't stupid and crazy enough to be here."

"Crazy and stupid am I?" An elderly Sister of Battle made her way over to me. Her hair was pale white and her face heavily lined. One might have thought that all Sisters dyed their hair white, but only those of Our Martyred Lady did. This one wore the red armor of the order of the Bloody Rose, that hair was her natural color. Reaching me, she holstered her flamer and offered a hand to me. "Be careful who you insult, I may not save you next time."

"Is that what saving me is supposed to look like? Because it leaves something to be desired. Felt more like I was a distraction." My voice is blunt, but I'm smiling as I take the sister's hand. She's as old as I am, in other words extremely fucking old, and I've known her for most of that extremely long life. "Wish they had told me my sister was going to be here, I would've forced the kids to move faster."

"Didn't want to get here and find all the work done?" she said, turning idly to the dead cultists and applying another jet of flame to the unscorched ones. While it was a legit tactic to make sure the enemy were dead, my sister had a rather unnerving look in her eye as she watched the bodies burn. She was enjoying the sight a little too much. "I would've saved you a couple if you asked nicely." The worst part about this was that most people would think she was being sarcastic. I knew she was dead serious.

"More like I'm concerned about my sister being ok," I said, so that no one else could hear me, except maybe the vox-operator.

A small glance of tenderness crossed her face. "Aw, you're sweet," she said sincerely. "With you, fun shared is fun doubled. Minus the parts when you get shot." She gave a very toothy grin, one that looked so menacing that I heard a couple of nearby troopers take a step back in shock. "Then I just have to make it clear to all of the servants of the false gods what a terrible mistake they've made. I mean, I would've done that anyway." She lovingly stroked her flamer. "You know me, I love my work." Understatement of the fucking 42nd millennium. I'm still 99% convinced she became a sister purely to work with fire. "And I enjoy it either way. But there's a certain intensity when you're in danger. It's not just me enjoying it. I just get an overwhelming urge to just stamp them out!"

Without warning, she lifted up an armored boot and brought it crashing down on the neck of a burning cultist. There was a sickening, wet crack as she snapped the body's neck. Lifting her foot up, she admired her work with a satisfied look. "That's better. I just get this gnawing feeling whenever you're in danger, and I just have to work it out. But you know what that feels like."

"Can't say that I do." Ok, that was a lie, I knew that feeling very well and got it just as much as she did. I just didn't admit it. I would say that I'm more subtle about it, but I'm fairly certain that would end up being a lie.

She grinned. "Maybe, maybe not. The important thing is that we're both alive, and everyone who tried to mess with us is dead." She let out a loud, bark of a laugh. "Funny how that always happens. You'd think they'd learn." I'm fairly certain everyone in the cave, even the other Sisters of Battle, were at the very least mildly uncomfortable by this point. Me? I found the whole situation both hilarious and a bit comforting. This was familiar ground. I knew this.

"Well, I think it's around time for your favorite part of the job. We've got an upper platoon strength's worth of dead cultists here. Corpse disposal time." Her grin widened. "I've got a patrol to finish. I'll try to convince the upper command not to, since we're down more than a few people, but I'm not feeling lucky." Yeah, I was cussing out the Lord General as we left, my sister starting a merry bonfire and cackling as we went. Patrol orders still stood.

We were down to ten people now. A good chunk of the platoon was still babysitting corpses and we had taken some losses in the cave. I had thought that this would be the kind of loss I could handle. The tragic but unavoidable attrition of war. Then someone said something about how one of the people who had been killed had dropped his lasgun when the cultists had charged him, looking to draw his knife instead. Something about "honorable" combat. This is what happens when I try to be optimistic.

So we took the rest of the patrol back onto our first route. One dumbass had gotten part of her ear shot off by a solid round and was showing it off to her friend, telling her that she was going to keep it. I instantly got flashbacks to the other hundred odd sometimes something like this had happened. Someone gets shot, they start showing off their wound, and the next thing you know they're in the infirmary and Zamora is tearing her hair out because they should've gone to her straight away.

So I stopped the march, marched up to her, and told her to clean and bandage the thing. She refused, on the basis that it wouldn't be as cool if it was all cleaned up. I clarified that it was an order. She told me to go to hell. I promptly kicked her in the back of the leg when she turned around, jumped on her, put her in a hold, and order my vox-operator to clean and bandage her wound while she was down. When it was done and we both got back up, I was not happy.

"AND IF YOU EVER PULL ANYTHING AS FUCKING STUPID AS THAT AGAIN!" I roared, "I WILL TAKE A SIDE TRIP TO THE NEAREST TYRANIC FLEET, AND SHOVE YOU DOWN THE THROAT OF THE NEAREST FUCKING CARNIFEX! SHOW OFF THE FUCKING WOUNDS FROM THAT!" She was, thankfully, docile the rest of the trip.

Nothing else happened, except one prick tried to sneak a little bit of hooch on the patrol. I've been drinking too long to miss him. I grabbed his flask, banged him on the head with it, dumped (most of) it and pocketed the flask. The guy almost complained back, but I was clearly angry enough at this point that he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

Now, you remember what I said before about wondering why I got out of bed? I had asked that around four or five times this day. The first being the double patrol, the second for the galaxy's shittiest suicide pact, the third for the honorbound training dummy, the fourth for the moron that thought a one eared lady would be a good freakshow attraction and the fifth and final for Mr. glug glug. I thought this day couldn't possibly get any worse. I said it out loud, "this day can't get any worse," as I finally stumbled into my room, my wife not back yet, and collapsed on the bed. I need to learn to keep my fucking mouth shut.

"Salutations." I snapped bolt up right from where I had been lying face down, my hellgun at the ready. I thought I had a cultists or a potential fragging on my hand. I was not so lucky. Sitting cross legged on a stool was an Eldar, a Harlequin to be precise. "I am a humble servant of the Laughing God. A Shadowseeker of the Masque of the Hidden Path."

He might as well have said "Hello, my name is In the Face, first name Shoot," because that's all I heard. "Why are you here?" I ask, my finger hovering over my hellgun's trigger. I don't fire, however. I have no love for Eldar, and even the Harlequins are allies of convenience at best. But one word that I clearly heard him say was "Shadowseeker." I have fought a Shadowseeker once in my life, and it was not something I wanted to repeat. A dozen holograms backflipping through the room while a vortex of shadows caused all but a handful of shots to go wide? I didn't need a repeat of that.

"To give you a warning," he replied. "That which has happened before will happen again. The black tide will wash over us all." Around this point two vicious battles were going on inside my head. The logic side of me was urging caution and restraint. Trying to remind myself that this was an ancient warrior, thousands of years old, that could most likely make my head explode with a thought. The rest of me was screaming "THE FUCKING CUNT IS SPEAKING IN RIDDLES!? THROUGH HIS FACE! PUT A LAS ROUND THROUGH HIS FUCKING CUNT FACE!"

And then something happened that utterly through me off. He started laughing. "I jest, I jest," he said. "I do come with a warning, but one much more helpful. Reaching into his gaudy, flowing and brightly colored robes, he produced an Imperial data-slate. "I have spent the last few months scouting enemy territory. I have collected as much information as I could reasonably aquire, and compiled it all there."

One hand still on my hellgun, something the Shadowseeker was cheerfully ignoring, I took the slate. Out of the corner of my eye, I started flicking through the slate. I did a double take. Baneblades, Leman Russes, Valkyries, Marauder bombers and destroyers, masses upon masses of Chimeras and Titans. Oh Emperor protect me the Titans. All reporting to the Chaos Lord. I started at the report before looking back up at the Harlequin. "I'm ready for the part of the comedy act where you reveal this was all a joke and then show me the report that doesn't say how utterly fucked we all are now."

The Harlequin let out another laugh, although it was a much sadder laugh. His mask, I realized, was lying on his lap, baring his face. He had a very depressing smile on his face. "Forgive me, but I do not jest when it comes to the servants of She Who Thirsts. Your enemy and my enemy lurk out there, not far from this planet, and she has amassed a mighty army. Not just in war machines, but in numbers as well. Read on."

My hellgun dropped to the floor as I continued to read on, scrolling past the highly detailed numbers on the enemy vehicles, complete with precise numbers, distribution and quality. Eventually I reached the point that talked about infantrymen. A horrible gnawing feeling spread through my bones. I had been feeling it a lot lately, but this was the worst burst of it I had felt in a long time. "She's arming...everyone she has?"

"Farmers, miners, factory workers, she's arming them all," the Harlequin said. "When there aren't enough rifles to go around, she gives them spears. Makeshift craft has been constructed to ship them all, and Navigators are being bred to man them. She has developed a rather inhumane method of accelerated reproduction that I'd rather not go into detail about. The Navigators that she has go from children to fully grown in a matter of months. Though they go from men and women to corpses just as fast."

The gnawing is getting worse. "Chaos has a tendency to be self destructive, but I've never seen anything like this before," I say to no one in particular.

The Harlequin nodded. "I agree. Abbadon, while his constant attacks never achieved the level of success they sought, has never the less proven to be skilled at endurance. Ten thousand years he has lasted, and he seems to have settled for a slow crawl of minor victories. Our new mutual foe seems to lack the preservation that has kept Abbadon alive all these years. She intends to either take this planet or sacrifice every last pawn she has trying."

I can think of a hundred-thousand ways this can end, and maybe three of them are ideal. And even those end with a few billion Imperial soldiers and citizens dead and with a cracked planet. I stopped looking at the slate and at the Harlequin. The questions all came tumbling out. "Why are you showing me this? And by that I mean why me in particular, why are you showing the Imperium at all, and what do you plan to get out of it?"

"All fair questions," the Harlequin said. "Billions on this planet alone. So why did I pick you, when there are such hatreds between our species. Well, it's a simple answer. I found this." Into his robes he went again, pulling something else out this time. A copy of Avoiding Stupid Deaths in the 41st Millenium. "An interesting read."

"You're fucking kidding me," I said, before I could stop myself.

"I see you don't have much of an author's persona. An interesting approach to take," he said, flipping through the pages. "I see you hardly have a high opinion of my kind, but seem to be willing to work with us. More importantly, you have fought this servant of She Who Thirsts before. You know how dangerous she is. So I decided you would take information about her seriously." Can't deny that logic. Even if it did make me want to punch him in the face. I can work with Eldar if it helps me survive, now they're making housecalls? I don't like this one bit.

"As for why I am contacting the Imperium, you should know well that our kinds make alliances when times are dire. And, as much as it saddens me to say it, the fight against She Who Thirsts and her kind goes poorly. My master has scattered us all across the Imperium, doing what we can where we can. Many of my kind even work directly with the one you call Roboute Guilliman. My place is here. Stopping a warband from growing into one that may ravage hundreds if not thousands of planets."

"She did seem like the type who wouldn't be satisfied with only 47 planets. Though I suppose it's 49 now. Guess she wants this planet to make it a nice even fifty," I said bitterly.

"She does have a flair for the dramatics," said the Harlequin. I had to fight back the urge to tell him to go fuck himself after he said that unironically. "As for what I want out of it? Simply put, her and her minions dead." That, I can get behind. Good fucking luck making it happen though. He seemed to realize what I was thinking. "I have few warriors that I can call upon, but I can permit the Imperium limited use of the Webway in the coming battle. Surgical strikes on enemy territory should be possible."

I stood up, shouldering my hellgun and flicking through the slate. "I'll have to get this to my commander. It's probably for the best if you stay out of sight until I get her to get someone higher up on the horn. We need to have someone actually approve you being here, if you don't want to be riddled with las rounds." And we wouldn't want that highly relieving event to transpire, would we?

He nodded. "I can stay out of sight. I have a talent for it. I wish you luck." He said that with utter sincerity and kindness. God I hate this prick.

"Don't. Fucking. Move." I said, getting up, pointing as I went, before slipping out of my room. Well this was a fine fucking mess I was in. I'd have to flag down the colonel, make sure no one I cared about went anywhere near that thing just in case he was insincere, and somehow forge an alliance with the Harlequins. No pressure.

Moving towards the bottom of the slate's long report, I saw something that filled me with nothing less than pure horror. "Constant talk among servants of She Who Thirsts. Referring to front line commander who took one of two Imperium planets. High regard from overall commander. Powerful individual. Many hints that he is the overall commander's son. Must confirm with Imperium intelligence to be certain." Son. She had a son. Taking the flask I had confiscated early, I drained it.

Plenty of material for the book, on the bright side. So much that I'll have to carry some of it over to the next chapter. For the final time that night, I asked myself a question. "Why did I bother getting out of bed today?"

XXXXX

Author's Note: Fun fact. I always imaged the sister in my head as the quiet one who has vicious bursts of violence in combat, along with severe devotion to the Emperor. Then I actually started writing her and said "you know what'd be fun? A more bombastic Sister of Battle." And now here we are. Still a violent pyromaniac, but you know, you probably expected that from the get go.

Sadly I couldn't get all of the narrator's family in, there's only so much I can do and make it feel natural.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, Ryan Van Schaack, RaptorusMaximus, and Davis Swinney for their amazing support, and for deciding on this chapter. I decided to include it in the story instead of posting it separately, like other one-shots, because it fits into the story well.


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